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A Textbook of Theosophy by C.W. Leadbeater

A Textbook of Theosophy

by C.W. Leadbeater

Published in 1912, 1914, 1918, 1925 and 1937

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 - WHAT THEOSOPHY IS

CHAPTER II - FROM THE ABSOLUTE TO MAN

CHAPTER III - THE FORMATION OF A SOLAR SYSTEM

CHAPTER IV - THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE

CHAPTER V - THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN

CHAPTER VI - AFTER DEATH

CHAPTER VII - REINCARNATIONCHAPTER VIII - THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

CHAPTER IX - THE PLANETARY CHAINS

CHAPTER X -THE RESULT OF THEOSOPHICAL STUDY

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CHAPTER 1

WHAT THEOSOPHY IS

(Page 1 ) “ There is a school of philosophy still in existence of which modern culture has lost sight.” In

these words Mr. A. P. Sinnett began his1881 book, The Occult World, the first popular exposition of Theosophy, published thirty years ago. During the years that have passed since then, many thousandshave learned wisdom in that school, yet to the majority its teachings are still unknown, and they can giveonly the vaguest of replies to the query, “What is Theosophy?”

Two books already exist which answer that question: Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism and Mrs. Besant’sThe Ancient Wisdom. I have no thought of entering into competition with those standard works; what Idesire is to present a statement, as clear and simple as I can make it, which may be regarded asintroductory to them.

We often speak of Theosophy as not in itself a religion, but the truth which lies behind all religions alike.That is so; yet, from another point of view, we may surely say that it is at once a philosophy, because itputs plainly before us an explanation of the scheme () of evolution of both the souls and the bodiecontained, in our solar system. It is a religion in so far as, having shown us the course of ordinaryevolution, it also puts before us and advises a method of shortening that course, so that by consciouseffort we may progress more directly towards the goal. It is a science, because it treats both thesesubjects as matters not of theological belief but of direct knowledge obtainable by study andinvestigation. It asserts that man has no need to trust to blind faith, because he has within him latentpowers which, when aroused, enable him to see and examine for himself, and it proceeds to prove itscase by showing how those powers may be awakened. It is itself a result of the awakening of suchpowers by men, for the teachings which it puts before us are founded upon direct observations made in

the past, and rendered possible only by such development.

As a philosophy, it explains to us that the solar system is a carefully - ordered mechanism, amanifestation of a magnificent life, of which man is but a small part. Nevertheless, it takes up that smallpart which immediately concerns us, and treats it exhaustively under three heads – present, past andfuture.

It deals with the present by describing what man really is, as seen by means of developed faculties. It iscustomary to speak of man as having a soul. Theosophy, as the result of direct investigation, reverses

that dictum, and states that man is a soul, and has a body – in fact several bodies, which are his vehicleand instruments in various worlds. These worlds are (Page 3) not separate in space; they aresimultaneously present with us, here and now, and can be examined; they are the divisions of thematerial side of Nature – different degrees of density in the aggregation of matter, as will presently beexplained in detail. Man has an existence in several of these, but is normally conscious only of thelowest, though sometimes in dreams and trances he has glimpses of some of the others. What is calleddeath is the laying aside of the vehicle belonging to this lowest world, but the soul or real man in a higheworld is no more changed or affected by this than the physical man is changed or affected when heremoves his overcoat. All this is a matter, not of speculation, but of observation and experiment.

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Theosophy has much to tell us of the past history of man – of how in the course of evolution he has comto what he now is. This also is a matter of observation, because of the fact that there exists an indeliblerecord of all that has taken place – a sort of memory of Nature – by examining which the scenes of earlier evolution may be made to pass before the eyes of the investigator as though they were happeninat this moment. By thus studying the past we learn that man is divine in origin and that he has a longevolution behind him – a double evolution, that of the life or soul within, and that of the outer form. Welearn, too, that the life of man as a soul is of what to us seems enormous length, and that what we have

been in the habit of calling his life is in reality only one day of his real existence. He has already livedthrough many such days, and has many more of them yet before him; and if we wish to understand the(Page 4 ) real life and its object, we must consider it in relation not only to this one day of it, which beginswith birth and ends with death, but also to the days which have gone before and those which are yet tocome.

Of those that are yet to come there is also much to be said, and on this subject too a great deal of definite information is available. Such information is obtainable, first, from men who have already passemuch further along the road of evolution than we, and have consequently direct experience of it; and,secondly, from inferences drawn from the obvious direction of the steps which we seem to have been

previously taken. The goal of this particular cycle, is in sight, though still far above us but it would seemthat, even when that has been attained, an infinity of progress still lies before everyone who is willing toundertake it.

One of the most striking advantages of Theosophy is that the light which it brings to us at once solvesmany of our problems, clears away many difficulties, accounts for the apparent injustices of life, and in adirections brings order out of seeming chaos. Thus while some of its teaching is based upon theobservation of forces whose direct working is somewhat beyond the ken of the ordinary man of the worldif the latter will accept it as a hypothesis he will very soon come to see that it must be a correct one,because it, and it alone, furnishes a coherent and reasonable explanation of the drama of life which is

being played before him.

The existence of Perfected Men, and the possibility of coming into touch with Them and being taught b(Page 5) Them, are prominent among the great new truths which Theosophy brings to the Western WorldAnother of them is the stupendous fact that the world is not drifting blindly into anarchy, but that itsprogress is under the control of a perfectly organized Hierarchy, so that final failure even for the tiniest oits units is of all impossibilities the most impossible. A glimpse of the working of that Hierarchy inevitablyengenders the desire to co-operate with it, to serve under it, in however humble a capacity, and sometime in the far-distant future to be worthy to join the outer fringes of its ranks.

This brings us to that aspect of Theosophy which we have called religious. Those who come to know anto understand these things are dissatisfied with the slow aeons of evolution; they yearn to become moreimmediately useful, and so they demand and obtain knowledge of the shorter but steeper Path. There isno possibility of escaping the amount of work that has to be done. It is like carrying a load up a mountainwhether one carries it straight up a steep path or more gradually by a road of gentle slope, precisely thesame number of foot-pounds must be exerted. Therefore to do the same work in a small fraction of thetime means determined effort. It can be done, however, for it has been done; and those who have done agree that it far more than repays the trouble. The limitations of the various vehicles are therebygradually transcended, and the liberated man becomes an intelligent co-worker in the mighty plan for th

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evolution of all beings.

In its capacity as a religion, too, Theosophy gives (Page 6) its followers a rule of life, based not on allegecommands delivered at some remote period of the past, but on plain common sense as indicated byobserved facts. The attitude of the student of Theosophy towards the rules which it prescribes resemblerather that which we adopt to hygienic regulations than obedience to religious commandments. We may

say, if we wish, that this thing or that is in accordance with the divine Will, for the divine Will is expressedin what we know as the laws of nature. Because that Will wisely ordereth all things, to infringe its lawsmeans to disturb the smooth working of the scheme, to hold back for a moment that fragment or tiny parof evolution, and consequently to bring discomfort upon ourselves and others. It is for that reason that thwise man avoids infringing them – not to escape the imaginary wrath of some offended deity.

But if from a certain point of view we may think of Theosophy as a religion, we must note two great poinof difference between it and what is ordinarily called religion in the West. First, it neither demands belieffrom its followers, nor does it even speak of belief in the sense in which that word is usually employed.The student of occult science either knows a thing or suspends his judgment about it; there is no place i

his scheme for blind faith. Naturally, beginners in the study cannot yet know for themselves, so they areasked to read the results of the various observations and to deal with them as probable hypothesis –provisionally to accept and act upon them, until such time as they can prove for themselves.

Secondly, Theosophy never endeavours to convert (Page 7) any man from whatever religion he alreadyholds. On the contrary, it explains his religion to him, and enables him to see in it deeper meanings thanhe has ever known before. It teaches him to understand it and live it better than he did, and in manycases it gives back to him, on a higher and more intelligent level, the faith in it which he had previously abut lost.

Theosophy has its aspect as a science also; it is in very truth a science of life, a science of the soul. Itapplies to everything the scientific method of oft-repeated, painstaking observation, and then tabulatesthe results and makes deductions from them. In this way it has investigated the various planes of naturethe conditions of man’s consciousness during life and after what is commonly called death. It cannot betoo often repeated that its statements on all these matters are not vague guesses or tenets of faith, butare based upon direct and oft-repeated observation of what happens. Its investigators have dealt also toa certain extent with subjects more in the range of ordinary science, as may be seen by those who readthe recently issued book on Occult Chemistry .

Thus we see that Theosophy combines within itself some of the characteristics of philosophy, religion anscience. What, it might be asked, is its gospel for this weary world? What are the main points whichemerge from its investigations? What are the great facts which it has to lay before humanity?

They have been well summed up under three main heads.

“There are three truths which are absolute, and (Page 8) which cannot be lost, but yet may remain silentfor lack of speech.

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“The soul of man is immortal, and its future is the future of a thing whose growth and splendour has nolimit.

“The principle which gives life dwells in us and without us, is undying and eternally beneficent, is notheard or seen or smelt, but is perceived by the man who desires perception

“Each man is his own absolute lawgiver; the dispenser of glory or gloom to himself; the decreer of hislife, his reward, his punishment.

“These truths, which are as great as is life itself, are as simple as the simplest mind of man”.

Put shortly, and in the language of the man of the street, this means that God is good, that man isimmortal, and that as we sow so we must reap. There is a definite scheme of things; it is under intelligendirection and works under immutable laws. Man has his place in this scheme and is living under these

laws. If he understands them and co-operates with them, he will advance rapidly and will be happy; if hdoes not understand them – if wittingly or unwittingly, he breaks them, he will delay his progress and bemiserable. These are not theories, but proved facts. Let him who doubts read on, and he will see. (Page

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CHAPTER II

FROM THE ABSOLUTE TO MAN

Of the Absolute, the Infinite, the All-embracing, we can at our present stage know nothing, except that It

is; we can say nothing that is not a limitation, and therefore inaccurate.

In It are innumerable universes; in each universe countless solar systems. Each solar system is theexpression of a mighty Being, whom we call the Logos, the Word of God, the Solar Deity. He is to it allthat men mean by God. He permeates it; there is nothing in it which is not He; it is the manifestation of Him in such matter as we can see. Yet He exists above it and outside it, living a stupendous life of Hisown among His Peers. As is said in Eastern Scripture: “Having permeated this whole universe with onefragment of Myself, I remain”.

Of this higher life of His we can know nothing. But of the fragment of His life which energizes His system

we may know something in the lower levels of its manifestation. We may not see Him, but we may seeHis power at work. No one who is clairvoyant can be atheistic; the evidence is too tremendous.

Out of Himself He has called this mighty system into being. We who are in it are evolving fragments of His life, Sparks of His divine Fire; from Him we all have come; into Him we shall all return.

Many have asked why He as done this; why He (Page 10) has emanated from Himself all this system; whHe has sent us forth to face the storms of life. We cannot know, nor is the question practical; suffice itthat we are here, and we must do our best. Yet many philosophers have speculated on this point and

many suggestions have been made. The most beautiful that I know is that of a Gnostic philosopher:

“God is Love, but Love itself cannot be perfect unless it has those upon whom it can be lavished and bywhom it can be returned. Therefore He put forth of Himself into matter, and He limited His glory, in orderthat through this natural and slow process of evolution we might come into being; and we in turnaccording to His will are to develop until we reach even His own level, and then the very love of God itsewill become more perfect, because it will then be lavished on those, His own children, who will fullyunderstand and return it, and so His great scheme will be realized and His Will be done”.

At what stupendous elevation His consciousness abides we know not, nor can we know its true nature ait shows itself there. But when He puts Himself down into such conditions as are within our reach, Hismanifestation is ever threefold, and so all religions have imaged Him as a Trinity. Three, yetfundamentally One; Three Persons (for person means a mask) yet one God, showing Himself in thoseThree Aspects. Three to us, looking at Them from below, because Their functions are different; one toHim, because He knows Them to be but facets of Himself.

All three of these Aspects are concerned in the evolution of the solar System; all Three are alsoconcerned (Page 11) in the evolution of man. This evolution is His will; the method of it is His plan.

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Next below this Solar Deity, yet also in some mysterious manner part of Him, come His seven Ministerssometimes called the Planetary Spirits. Using an analogy drawn from the physiology of our own body,Their relation to Him is like that of the ganglia or the nerve centers of the brain. All evolution which comeforth from Him comes through one or other of Them.

Under Them in turn come vast hosts or order of spiritual beings, whom we call angels or devas. We do

not yet know all the functions which They fulfill in different parts of this wonderful scheme, but we findsome of them intimately connected with the building of the system and the unfolding of life within it.

Here in our world there is a great Official who represents the Solar Deity, and is in absolute control of allthe evolution that takes place upon this planet. We may image Him as the true King of this world, andunder Him are ministers in charge of different departments. One of these departments is concerned withthe evolution of the different races of humanity, so that for each great race there is a Head who founds itdifferentiates it from all others, and watches over its development. Another department is that of religionand education, and it is from this that all the greatest teachers of history have come – that all religionshave been sent forth. The great Official at the head of this department either comes Himself or sends on

of His pupils to found a new religion when He decides that one is needed.

Therefore all religions, at the time of their first (Page 12) presentation to the world, have contained adefinite statement of the Truth, and in its fundamentals this Truth has been always the same. Thepresentations of it have varied because of differences in the races to who it was offered. The condition ocivilization and the degree of evolution obtained by various races have made it desirable to present thisone Truth in divers forms. But the inner Truth is always the same, and the source from which it comes isthe same, even though the external phases may appear to be different and even contradictory. It isfoolish for men to wrangle over the question of the superiority of one teacher or one form of teaching toanother, for the teacher is always one sent by the Great Brotherhood of Adepts, and in all its important

points, in its ethical and moral principles, the teaching has always been the same.

There is in the world a body of Truth which lies at the back of all these religions, and represents the factsof nature as far as they are at present known to man. In the outer world, because of their ignorance of this, people are always disputing and arguing about whether there is a God; whether man survives deatwhether definite progress is possible for him, and what is his relation to the universe. These questionsare ever present in the mind of man as soon as intelligence is awakened. They are not unanswerable, ais frequently supposed; the answers to them are within the reach of anyone who will make proper effortsto find them. The truth is obtainable, and the conditions of its attainment are possible of achievement byanyone who will make the effort. (Page 13)

In the earlier stages of the development of humanity, the great Officials of the Hierarchy are providedfrom outside, from other and more highly evolved parts of the system, but as soon as men can be traineto the necessary level of power and wisdom these offices are held by them. In order to be fit to hold sucan office a man must raise himself to a very high level, and must become what is called an adept – abeing of goodness, power and wisdom so great that He towers above the rest of humanity, for He hasalready attained the summit of ordinary human evolution; He has achieved what the plan of the Deitymarked out for Him to achieve during this age or dispensation. But His evolution later on continuesbeyond that level – continues to divinity.

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A large number of men have attained the Adept level – men not of one nation, but of all the leadingnations of the world – rare souls who with indomitable courage have stormed the fortresses of nature,and captured her innermost secrets, and so have truly earned the right to be called Adepts. Among Thethere are many degrees and many lines of activity; but always some of Them remain within touch of ourearth as members of this Hierarchy which has in charge the administration of the affairs of our world andof the spiritual evolution of our humanity.

This august body is often called the Great White Brotherhood, but its members are not a community allliving together. Each of Them, to a large extent, draws Himself apart from the world, and They are inconstant communication with one another and with Their Head; but Their knowledge of higher forces(Page 14 ) is so great that this is achieved without any necessity for meeting in the physical world. In mancases They continue to live each in His own country, and Their power remains unsuspected among thoswho live near Them. Any man who will may attract their attention, but he can do it only by showinghimself worthy of Their notice. None need fear that his efforts will pass unnoticed; such oversight isimpossible, for the man who is devoting himself to service such as this, stands out from the rest of humanity like a great flame in a dark night. A few of these great Adepts, who are thus working for thegood of the world, are willing to take on apprentices those who have resolved to devote themselves

utterly to the services of mankind; such Adepts are called Masters.

One of these apprentices was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky – a great soul who was sent out to offer knowledge to the world some forty years ago [1875]. With Colonel Henry Steele Olcott she founded theTheosophical Society for the spread of this knowledge which she had to give. Among those who cameinto contact with her in those early days was Mr. A. P. Sinnett, the editor of The Pioneer , and his keenintellect at once grasped the magnitude and the importance of the teaching which she put before him.Although Madame Blavatsky herself had previously written Isis Unveiled , it had attracted but littleattention, and it was Mr. Sinnett who first made the teaching really available for western readers in histwo books, The Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism.

It was through these works that I myself first came to know their author, and afterwards MadameBlavatsky (Page 15) herself; from both of them I learned much. When I asked Madame Blavatsky how oncould learn still more, how one could make definite progress along the Path which she pointed out to usshe told me of the possibility that other students might be accepted as apprentices by the great Masterseven as she herself had been accepted, and that the only way to gain such acceptance was to showoneself worthy of it by earnest and altruistic work. She told me that to reach that goal a man must beabsolutely one-pointed in his determination; that no one who tried to serve both God and Mammon couldever hope to succeed. One of these Masters Himself has said: “In order to succeed, a pupil must leavehis own world and come into ours”.

This means that he must cease to be one of the majority who live for wealth and power, and must join thtiny majority who care nothing for such things, but live only in order to devote themselves selflessly to thgood of the world. She warned us clearly that the way was difficult to tread, that we should bemisunderstood and reviled by those who still lived in the world, and that we had nothing to look forward tbut the hardest of hard work; and though the result was sure, no one could foretell how long it would takto arrive at it. Some of us accepted these conditions joyfully, and we have never for a moment regrettedthe decision.

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After some years of work I had the privilege of coming into contact with these great Masters of theWisdom; from Them I learnt many things – among others, how to verify for myself at first hand most (Pa16) of the teachings which They had given. So that, in this matter, I write of what I know, and what I haveseen for myself. Certain points are mentioned in the teaching, for the verification of which powers arerequired far beyond anything which I have gained so far. Of them, I can only say that they are consistenwith what I do know, and in many cases are necessary as hypotheses to account for what I have seen.They came to me along with the rest of the theosophical system upon the authority of these mighty

Teachers. Since then I have learned to examine for myself by far the greater part of what I was told, andhave found the information given to me to be correct in every particular; therefore I am justified inassuming the probability that that other part, which as yet I cannot verify, will also prove to be correctwhen I arrive at its level.

To attain the honour of being accepted as an apprentice of one of the Masters of the Wisdom is theobject set before himself by every earnest Theosophical student. But it means a determined effort. Therehave always been men who were willing to make the necessary effort, and therefore there have alwaysbeen men who knew. The knowledge is so transcendent that when a man grasps it fully he becomesmore than man, and he passes beyond our ken.

But there are stages in the acquirement of this knowledge, and we may learn much, if we will, from thoswho themselves are still in process of learning; for all human beings stand on one or other of the rungs othe ladder of evolution. The primitive stand at its foot; we who are civilized beings have already (Page 17climbed part of the way. But though we can look back and see rungs of the ladder below us which wehave already passed, we may also look up and see many rungs above us to which we have not yetattained. Just as men are standing even now on each of the rungs below us, so that we can see thestages by which man has mounted, so also are there men standing on each of the rungs above us, sothat from studying them we may see how man shall mount in the future. Precisely because we see menon every step of this ladder, which leads up to a glory which as yet we have no words to express, we

know that the ascent to that glory is possible for us. Those who stand high above us, so high that Theyseem to us as gods in Their marvellous knowledge and power, tell us that They stood not long sincewhere we are standing now, and They indicate to us clearly the steps which lie between, which we alsomust tread if we would be as They. (Page 18)

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CHAPTER III

THE FORMATION OF A SOLAR SYSTEM

The beginning of the universe (if ever it had a beginning) is beyond our ken. At the earliest point of

history that we can reach, the two great opposites of Spirit and matter, of life and form, are already in fulactivity. We find that the ordinary conception of matter needs a revision, for what are commonly calledforce and matter are in reality only two varieties of Spirit at different stages in evolution, and the realmatter or basis of everything lies in the background unperceived. A French scientist has recently said:“There is no matter; there is nothing but holes in the aether”.

This also agrees with the celebrated theory of Professor Osborne Reynolds. Occult investigation showsthis to be the correct view, and in that way explains what Oriental sacred books mean when they say thamatter is an illusion.

The ultimate root-matter as seen at our level is what scientists call the aether of space. ( This has beendescribed in Occult Chemistry under the name of koilon) To every physical sense the space occupied byit appears empty, yet in reality this aether is far denser than anything of which we can conceive. Itsdensity is defined by Professor Reynolds as being ten thousand (Page 19) times greater than that of wateand it means pressure as seven hundred and fifty thousand tons to the square inch.

This substance is perceptible only to highly developed clairvoyant power. We must assume a time(though we have no direct knowledge on this point) when this substance filled all space. We must alsosuppose that some great Being (not the Deity of a solar system, but some Being almost infinitely higher than that) changed this condition of rest by pouring out His spirit or force into a certain section of this

matter, a section of the size of a whole universe. The effect of the introduction of this force is at that of thblowing of a mighty breath; it has formed within this aether an incalculable number of tiny sphericalbubbles (The bubbles are spoken of in The Secret Doctrine as the holes which Fohat digs in space), andthese bubbles are the ultimate atoms of which what we call matter is composed. They are not the atomsof the chemist, nor even the ultimate atoms of the physical world. They stand at a far higher level, andwhat are usually called atoms are composed of vast aggregations of these bubbles, as will be seen later

When the Solar Deity begins to make His system, He finds ready to His hand this material – this infinitemass of tiny bubbles which can be built up into various kinds of matter as we know it. He commences bydefining the limit of His field of activity, a vast sphere whose circumference is far larger than the orbit of

the outermost of His future planets. Within the limit of that sphere He sets up a kind of (Page 20) giganticvortex – a motion which sweeps together all the bubbles into a vast central mass, the material of thenebula that is to be.

Into this vast revolving sphere He sends forth successive impulses of force, gathering together thebubbles into ever more and more complex aggregations, and producing in this way seven giganticinterpenetrating worlds of matter of different degrees of density, all concentric and all occupying the samspace.

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Acting through His Third Aspect, He sends forth into this stupendous sphere the first of these impulses. sets up all through the sphere a vast number of tiny vortices, each of which draws into itself forty-ninebubbles and arranges them in a certain shape. These little groupings of bubbles so formed are the atomof the second of the interpenetrating worlds. The whole number of the bubbles is not used in this way,sufficient being left in the dissociated state to act as atoms for the first and highest of these worlds. Indue time comes the second impulse, which seizes upon nearly all these forty nine bubble atoms (leavingonly enough to provide atoms for the second world), draws them back into itself and then, throwing them

out again, sets up among them vortices, each of which holds within itself 2,401 bubbles (49 2). Theseform the atoms of the third world. Again after a time comes a third impulse, which in the same way seizeupon nearly all these 2,401 bubble atoms, draws them back again into their original form, and againthrows them outward once more as the atoms of the fourth world – (Page 21) each atom containing thistime 49 3 bubbles. This process is repeated until the sixth of these successive impulses has built theatom of the seventh or lowest world – that atom containing 49 6 of the original bubbles.

This atom of the seventh world is the ultimate atom of the physical world – not any of the atoms of whichchemists speak, but that ultimate out of which all their atoms are made. We have at this stage arrived atthat condition of affairs in which the vast whirling sphere contains within itself seven types of matter, all

one in essence, because all built of the same kind of bubbles, but differing in their degree of density. Allthese types are freely intermingled, so that specimens of each type would be found in a small portion of the sphere taken at random in any part of it, with, however, a general tendency of the heavier atoms togravitate more and more towards the center.

The seventh impulse sent out from the Third Aspect of the Deity does not, as before, draw back thephysical atoms which were last made into the original dissociated bubbles, but draws them together intocertain aggregations, thus making a number of different kinds of what may be called proto-elements, anthese again are joined together into the various forms which are known to science as chemical elementsThe making of these extends over a period of ages, and they are made in a certain definite order by the

interaction of several forces, as is correctly indicated in Sir William Crookes’ paper on The Genesis of thElements. Indeed the process of their making it is not even (Page 22) now concluded; uranium is the lateand heaviest element so far as we know, but others still more complicated may perhaps be produced inthe future.

As ages roll on the condensation increased, and presently the stage of a vast glowing nebula wasreached. As it cooled, still rapidly rotating, it flattened into a huge disc and gradually broke up into ringssurrounding a central body – an arrangement not unlike that which Saturn exhibits at the present day,though on a far larger scale. As the time drew near when the planets would be required for the purposesof evolution, the Deity set up somewhere in the thickness of each ring a subsidiary vortex, into which a

great deal of the matter of the ring was by degrees collected. The collisions of the gathered fragmentscaused a revival of the heat, and the resulting planet was for a long time a mass of glowing gas. Little bylittle it cooled once more, until it became fit to be the theatre of life such as ours. Thus were all theplanets formed.

Almost all the matter of those interpenetrating worlds was by this time concentrated into the newlyformed planets. Each of them was and is composed of all those different kinds of matter. The earth uponwhich we are now living is not merely a great ball of physical matter, built of the atoms of that lowestworld, but has also attached to it an abundant supply of matter of the sixth, the fifth, the fourth and other

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worlds. It is well known to all students of science that particles of matter never actually touch oneanother, even in the hardest of substances. The spaces between (Page 23) them are always far greater iproportion than their own size – enormously greater. So there is ample room for all the other kinds of atoms of all those other worlds, not only to lie between the atoms of the denser matter, but to move quitefreely among them and around them. Consequently this globe upon which we live is not one world, butseven interpenetrating worlds, all occupying the same space, except that the finer types of matter extenfurther from the center than does the denser matter.

We have given names to these interpenetrating worlds for convenience in speaking of them. No name isneeded for the first, as man is not yet in direct connection with it; but when it is necessary to mention it, may be called the divine world. The second is described as the monadic, because in it exist those Sparkof the divine Life which we call the human Monads; but neither of these can be touched by the highestclairvoyant investigations at present possible for us. The third sphere, whose atoms contain 2,401bubbles, is called the spiritual world, because in it functions the highest Spirit in man as now constitutedThe fourth is the intuitional world (Previously called in theosophical literature the buddhic plane) becausfrom it come the highest intuitions. The fifth is the mental world, because of its matter is built the mind ofman. The sixth is called the emotional or astral world, because the emotions of man cause undulations i

its matter. (The name astral was given to it by mediaeval alchemists, because its matter is starry or shining as (Page 24) compared to that of the denser world). The seventh world, composed of the type of matter which we see all around us, is called the physical.

The matter of which all these interpenetrating worlds are built is essentially the same matter, butdifferently arranged and of different degrees of density. Therefore the rates at which these various typesof matter normally vibrate differ also. They may be considered as a vast gamut of undulations consistingof many octaves. The physical matter uses a certain number of the lowest of these octaves, the astralmatter another group of octaves just above that, the mental matter a still further group, and so on.

Not only has each of these worlds its own type of matter; it has also its own set of aggregations of thatmatter – its own substances. In each world we arrange these substances in seven classes according tothe rate at which their molecules vibrate. Usually, but not invariably, the slower oscillation involves also alarger molecule – a molecule, that is built up by a special arrangement of the smaller molecules of thenext higher subdivision. The application of heat increases the size of the molecules and also quickensand amplifies their undulation, so that they cover more ground, and the object as a whole expands, untilthe point is reached where the aggregation of molecules breaks up, and the latter passes from onecondition to that next above it. In the matter of the physical world the seven subdivisions are representeby seven degrees of density of matter, to which, beginning from below upwards, we give the names soliliquid, gaseous, etheric, super-etheric, subatomic and atomic.(Page 25)

The atomic subdivision is one in which all forms are built by the compression into certain shapes of thephysical atoms, without any previous collection of these atoms into blocks or molecules. Typifying thephysical ultimate atom for the moment by a brick, any form in the atomic subdivision would be made bygathering together some of the bricks, and building them into a certain shape. In order to make matter fothe next lower subdivision, a certain number of the bricks (atoms) would be first gathered together andcemented into small blocks of say four bricks each, five bricks each, six bricks or seven bricks; and thenthese blocks so made would be used as building-stones. For the next subdivision several of the blocks othe second subdivision cemented together in certain shapes would form building-stones, and so on to th

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lowest.

To transfer any substance from the solid condition to the liquid (that is to say, to melt it) is to increase thevibration of its compound molecules until at last they are shaken apart into the simpler molecules of which they were built. This process can in all cases be repeated again and again until finally any andevery physical substance can be reduced to the ultimate atoms of the physical world.

Each of these worlds has its inhabitants, whose senses are normally capable of responding to theundulations of their own world only. A man living (as we are all doing) in the physical world sees, hears,feels, by vibrations connected with the physical matter around him. He is equally surrounded by the astrand mental and other worlds which are interpenetrating his own denser world, but of them he is normally(Page 26) unconscious, because his senses cannot respond to the oscillations of their matter, just as our physical eyes cannot see by the vibrations of ultraviolet light, although scientific experiments show thatthey exist and there are other consciousnesses with differently-formed organs who can see by them. Abeing living in the astral world might be occupying the very same space as a being living in the physicalworld, yet each would be entirely unconscious of the other and would in no way impede the free

movement of the other. The same is true of all the other worlds. We are at this moment surrounded bythese worlds of finer matter, as close to us as the world we see, and their inhabitants are passing througus and about us, but we are entirely unconscious of them.

Since our evolution is centered at present upon this globe which we call the earth, it is in connection withit only that we shall be speaking of these higher worlds, so in future when I use the term “astral world” Ishall mean by it the astral part of our own globe only, and not (as heretofore) the astral part of the wholesolar system. This astral part of our own world is also a globe, but of astral matter. It occupies the sameplace as the globe which we see, but its matter (being so much lighter) extends out into space on allsides of us further than does the atmosphere of the earth – a great deal further. It stretches to a little les

than the mean distance of the moon, so that though the two physical globes, the earth and the moon, arnearly 240,000 miles apart, the astral globes of these two bodies touch one another when the moon is inperigee, but not when she is in apogee. I shall apply (Page 27) the term “mental world” to the still larger globe of mental matter in the midst of which our physical earth exists. When we come to the still higher globes we have spheres large enough to touch the corresponding spheres of other planets in the systemthough their matter also is just as much about us here on the surface of the solid earth as that of theothers. All these globes of finer matter are a part of us, and are all revolving round the sun with their visible part. The student will do well to accustom himself to think of our earth as the whole of this mass ointerpenetrating worlds – not only the comparatively small physical ball in the center of it. (Page 28)

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CHAPTER IV

THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE

All the impulses of life which I have described as building the interpenetrating worlds came forth from th

Third Aspect of the Deity. Hence in the Christian scheme that Aspect is called “the Giver of Life”, theSpirit who brooded over the face of the waters of space. In theosophical literature these impulses areusually taken as a whole, and called the first outpouring.

When the worlds had been prepared to this extent, and most of the chemical elements already existed,the second outpouring of life took place, and this came from the Second Aspect of the Deity. It broughtwith it the power of combination. In all the worlds it found existing what may be thought of as elementscorresponding to those worlds. It proceeded to combine those elements into organisms which it thenensouled, and in this way it built up the seven kingdoms of nature. Theosophy recognizes sevenkingdoms, because it regards man as separate from the animal kingdom, and it takes into accountseveral stages of evolution which are unseen by the physical eye, and gives to them the mediaeval namof “elemental kingdoms”.

The divine Life pours itself into matter from above, and its whole course may be thought of in two stages(Page 29 ) – the gradual assumption of grosser and grosser matter, and then the gradual casting off againof the vehicles which have been assumed. The earliest level upon which its vehicles can be scientificallyobserved is the mental – the fifth counting from the finer to the grosser, the first on which there areseparated globes. In practical study it is found convenient to divide this mental world into two parts, whicwe call the higher and lower according to the degree of density of their matter. The higher consists of thethree finer subdivisions of mental matter; the lower part of the other four.

When the outpouring reaches the higher mental world it draws together the ethereal elements there,combines them into what at the level correspond to substances, and of these substances builds formswhich it inhabits. We call this the first elemental kingdom.

After a long period of evolution, through different forms at that level, the wave of life, which is all the timepressing steadily downwards, learns to identify itself so fully with those forms that, instead of occupyingthem and withdrawing from them periodically, it is able to hold them permanently and make them part ofitself, so that now from that level it can proceed to the temporary occupation of forms at a still lower leveWhen it reaches this stage we call it the second elemental kingdom, the ensouling life of which resides

upon the higher mental levels, while the vehicles through which it manifests are on the lower.

After another vast period of similar length, it is found that the downward pressure has caused this (Page30 ) process to repeat itself; once more the life has identified itself with its forms, and has taken up itsresidence upon the lower mental levels, so that it is capable of ensouling bodies in the astral world. Atthis stage we call it the third elemental kingdom.

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We speak of all these forms as finer or grosser relatively to one another, but all of them are almostinfinitely finer than any with which we are acquainted in the physical world. Each of these three is akingdom of nature, as varied in the manifestations of its different forms of life as in the animal or vegetable kingdom which we know. After a long period spent in ensouling the forms of the third of theseelemental kingdoms it identifies itself with them in turn, and so is able to ensoul the etheric part of themineral kingdom, and becomes the life which vivifies that – for there is a life in the mineral kingdom justas much as in the vegetable or the animal, although it is in conditions where it cannot manifest so freely

In the course of the mineral evolution the downward pressure causes it to identify itself in the same waywith the etheric matter of the physical world, and from that to ensoul the denser matter of such mineralsas are perceptible to our senses.

In the mineral kingdom we include not only what are usually called minerals, but also liquids, gases andmany etheric substances the existence of which is unknown to western science. All the matter of whichwe know anything is living matter, and the life which it contains is always evolving. When it has reachedthe central point of the mineral stage the downward (Page 31) pressure ceases, and is replaced by anupward tendency; the outbreathing has ceased and the indrawing has begun.

When mineral evolution is completed, the life has withdrawn itself again into the astral world, but bearingwith it all the results obtained through its experiences in the physical. At this stage it ensouls vegetableforms, and begins to show itself much more clearly as what we commonly call life – plant life of all kindsand at a yet later stage of its development it leaves the vegetable kingdom and ensouls the animalkingdom. The attainment of this level is the sign that it has withdrawn itself still further, and is nowworking from the lower mental world. In order to work in physical matter from that mental world it mustoperate through the intervening astral matter; and that astral matter is now no longer part of the garmenof the group soul as a whole, but is the individual astral body of the animal concerned, as will be later explained.

In each of these kingdoms it not only passes a period of time which is to our ideas almost incredibly longbut it also goes through a definite course of evolution, beginning from the lower manifestations of thatkingdom and ending with the highest. In the vegetable kingdom, for example, the life-force mightcommence its career by occupying grasses or mosses and end it by ensouling magnificent forest trees.In the animal kingdom it might commence with the mosquitoes or with animalculae, and might end withthe finest specimens of the mammals. (Page 32)

The whole process is one of steady evolution from lower forms to higher, from the simpler to the morecomplex. But what is evolving is not primarily the form, but the life within it. The forms also evolve and

grow better as time passes; but this is in order that they may be appropriate vehicles for more and moreadvanced waves of life. When the life has reached the highest level possible in the animal kingdom, itmay then pass on into the human kingdom, under conditions which will presently be explained.

The outpouring leaves one kingdom and passes to another, so that if we had to deal with only one waveof this outpouring we could have in existence only one kingdom at a time. But the Deity sends out aconstant succession of these waves, so that at any given time we find a number of them simultaneouslyin operation. We ourselves represent one such wave; but we find evolving alongside us another wavewhich ensouls the animal kingdom – a wave which came out from the Deity one stage later than we did.

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We find also the vegetable kingdom, which represents a third wave, and the mineral kingdom, whichrepresents a fourth; and occultists know the existence all round us of three elemental kingdoms, whichrepresent the fifth, sixth and seventh waves. All these, however, are successive ripples of the same greaoutpouring from the Second Aspect of the Deity.

We have here, then, a scheme of evolution in which the divine Life involves itself more and more deeply

in matter, in order that through that matter it may receive vibrations which could not otherwise affect it(Page 33) – impacts from without, which by degrees arouse within it rates of undulation corresponding totheir own, so that it learns to respond to them. Later on it learns of itself to generate these rates of undulation, and so becomes a being possessed of spiritual powers.

We may presume that when this outpouring of life originally came forth from the Deity, at some levelaltogether beyond our power of cognition, it may perhaps have been homogeneous; but when it firstcomes within practical cognizance, when it is itself in the intuitional world, but is ensouling bodies madeof the matter of the higher mental world, it is already not one huge world-soul, but many souls. Let ussuppose a homogeneous outpouring, which may be considered as one vast soul at one end of the scale

at the other, when humanity is reached, we find that one vast soul broken up into millions of thecomparatively little souls of individual men. At any stage between these two extremes we find anintermediate condition, the immense world-soul already subdivided, but not to the utmost limit of possiblsubdivision.

Each man is a soul, but not each animal or each plant. Man, as a soul, can manifest through only onebody at a time in the physical world, whereas one animal soul manifests simultaneously through anumber of animal bodies, one plant-soul through, a number of separate plants. A lion, for example, is noa permanently separate entity in the same way as a man is. When the man dies – that is, when he as asoul lays aside his physical body – he remains himself exactly as he was before, an entity separate from

(Page 34) all other entities. When the lion dies, that which has been the separate soul of him is pouredback into the mass from which it came – a mass which is at the same time providing the souls for manyother lions. To such a mass we give the name of “group-soul”.

To such a group-soul is attached a considerable number of lion bodies – let us say a hundred. Each of those bodies while it lives has its hundredth part of the group-soul attached to it, and for the time beingthis is apparently quite separate, so that the lion is as much an individual during his physical life as theman; but he is not a permanent individual. When he dies the soul of him flows back into the group-soul twhich it belongs, and that identical soul-lion cannot be separated from the group.

A useful analogy may help comprehension. Imagine the group-soul to be represented by the water in abucket, and the hundred lion bodies by a hundred tumblers. As each tumbler is dipped into the bucket ittakes out from it a tumblerful of water (the separate soul). That water for the time being takes the shapeof the vehicle which it fills, and is temporarily separate from the water which remains in the bucket, andfrom the water in the other tumblers.

Now put into each of the hundred tumblers some kind of coloring matter or some kind of flavoring. Thatwill represent the qualities developed by its experiences in the separate soul of the lion during its lifetime

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Pour back the water from the tumbler into the bucket; that represents the death of the lion. The coloringmatter or the flavoring will be distributed (Page 35) through the whole of the water in the bucket, but will ba much fainter coloring, a much less pronounced flavor when thus distributed than it was when confinedin one tumbler. The qualities developed by the experience of one lion attached to that group-soul aretherefore shared by the entire group-soul but in a much lower degree.

We may take out another tumblerful of water from that bucket, but we can never again get exactly thesame tumblerful after it has once been mingled with the rest. Every tumblerful taken from that bucket inthe future will contain some traces of the coloring or flavoring put into each tumbler whose contents havbeen returned to the bucket. Just so the qualities developed by the experience of a single lion willbecome the common property of all lions who are in the future to be born from that group-soul, though ina lesser degree than that in which they existed in the individual lion who developed them.

That is the explanation of inherited instincts; that is why the duckling which has been hatched by a hentakes to the water instantly without needing to be shown, how to swim; why the chicken just out of itsshell will cower at the shadow of a hawk; why a bird which has been artificially hatched, and has never

seen a nest, nevertheless knows how to make one, and makes it according to the traditions of its kind.

Lower down the scale of animal life enormous numbers of bodies are attached to a single group-soul –countless millions, for example, in the case of some of the smaller insects; but as we rise in the animalkingdom (Page 36) the number of bodies attached to a single group-soul becomes smaller and smaller,and therefore the differences between individuals become greater.

Thus the group-souls, gradually break up. Returning to the symbol of the bucket, as tumbler after tumblof water is withdrawn from it, tinted with some sort of coloring matter and returned to it, the whole

bucketful of water gradually becomes richer in color. Suppose that by imperceptible degrees a kind of vertical film forms itself across the center of the bucket, and gradually solidifies itself into a division, sothat we have now a right half and a left half to the bucket, and each tumblerful of water which is taken ouis returned always to the same half from which it came.

Then presently a difference will be set up, and the liquid in one half of the bucket will no longer be thesame as that in the other. We have then practically two buckets, and when this stage is reached in agroup-soul it splits into two, as a cell separates by fission. In this way, as the experience grows ever richer, the group-souls grow smaller but more numerous, until at the highest point we arrive at man withhis single individual soul, which no longer returns into a group but remains always separate.

One of the life-waves is vivifying the whole of a kingdom; but not every group-soul in that life-wave willpass through the whole of that kingdom from the bottom to the top. If in the vegetable kingdom a certaingroup-soul has ensouled forest trees, when it passes on into the animal kingdom it will omit all (Page 37)the lower stages – that is, it will never inhabit insects or reptiles, but will begin at once at the level of thelower mammals. The insects and reptiles will be vivified by group-souls which have for some reason leftthe vegetable kingdom at a much lower level than the forest tree. In the same way the group-soul whichhas reached the highest levels of the animal kingdom, will not individualize into primitive savages but intmen of somewhat higher type, the primitive savage being recruited from group-souls which have left the

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animal kingdom at a lower level.

Group-souls at any level or at all levels arrange themselves into seven great types, according to theMinister of the Deity through whom their life has poured forth. These types are clearly distinguishable inall the kingdoms, and the successive forms taken by any one of them form a connected series, so thatanimals, vegetables, minerals and the varieties of the elemental creatures may all be arranged into

seven groups, and the life coming along one of those lines will not diverge into any of the others.

No detailed list has yet been made of the animals, plants or minerals from this point of view; but it iscertain that the life which is found ensouling a mineral of a particular type will never vivify a mineral of any other type than its own, though within that type it may vary. When it passes on to the vegetable andanimal kingdoms it will inhabit vegetables and animals of that type and of no other, and when iteventually reaches humanity it will individualize into men of that type and of no other. (Page 38)

The method of individualization is the raising of the soul of a particular animal to a level so much higher

than that attained by its group-soul that it can no longer return to the latter. This cannot be done with ananimal, but only with those whose brain is developed to a certain level, and the method usually adoptedto acquire such mental development is to bring the animal into close contact with man. Individualizationtherefore, is possible only for domestic animals, and only for certain kinds even of those. At the head of each of the seven types stands one kind of domestic animal – the dog for one, the cat for another, theelephant for a third, the monkey for a fourth, and so on. The wild animals can all be arranged on sevenlines leading up to the domestic animals; for example, the fox and the wolf are obviously on the same linwith the dog, while the lion, the tiger and the leopard equally obviously lead up to the domestic cat; sothat the group-soul animating a hundred lions mentioned some time ago might at a later stage of itsevolution have divided into, let us say, five group-souls each animating twenty cats.

The life-wave spends a long period of time in each kingdom; we are now only a little past the middle of such an aeon, and consequently the conditions are not favourable for the achievement of thatindividualization which normally comes only at the end of a period. Rare instances of such attainmentmay occasionally be observed on the part of some animal much in advance of the average. Closeassociation with man is necessary to produce this result. The animal if (Page 39) kindly treated developsdevoted affection for his human friend, and also unfolds his intellectual powers in trying to understandthat friend and to anticipate his wishes. In addition to this, the emotions and the thoughts of man actconstantly upon those of the animal, and tend to raise him to a higher level both emotionally andintellectually. Under favourable circumstances this development may proceed so far as to raise theanimal altogether out of touch with the group to which he belongs, so that his fragment of a group-soul

becomes capable of responding to the outpouring which comes from the First Aspect of the Deity.

For this final outpouring is not like the others, a mighty outrush affecting thousands or millionssimultaneously; it comes to each one individually as that one is ready to receive it. This outpouring hasalready descended as far as the intuitional world; but it comes no farther than that until this upward leapis made by the soul of the animal from below; but when that happens this Third Outpouring leaps down meet it, and in the higher mental world is formed an ego, a permanent individuality – permanent, that is,until, far later in his evolution, the man transcends it and reaches back to the divine unity from which hecame. To make this ego, the fragment of the group-soul (which has hitherto played the part always of

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ensouling force) becomes in its turn a vehicle, and is itself ensouled by that divine Spark which has falleinto it from on high. That Spark may be said to have been hovering in the monadic world over the groupsoul (Page 40) through the whole of its previous evolution, unable to effect a junction with it until itscorresponding fragment in the group-soul had developed sufficiently to permit it. It is this breaking awayfrom the rest of the group-soul and developing a separate ego which marks the distinction between thehighest animal and the lowest man. (Page 41)

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CHAPTER V

THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN

Man is therefore in essence a Spark of the divine Fire, belonging to the monadic world. (The President

has now decided upon a set of names for the planes, so for the future these will be used instead of thospreviously employed. A table of them is given below for reference) To that Spark, dwelling all the time inthat world, we give the name “Monad”. For the purpose of human evolution Monad manifests itself inlower worlds. When it descends one stage and enters the spiritual world, it shows itself there as the tripSpirit, having itself three aspects (just as in worlds infinitely higher the Deity has His three Aspects.) Of those three - one remains always in that world, and we call that the Spirit in man. The second aspectmanifests itself in the intuitional world, and we speak of it as the Intuition in man. The third shows itself inthe higher mental world, and we call it the Intelligence in man. These three aspects taken together constitute the ego which ensouls the fragment from the group-soul. Thus man as we know him, though i(Page 42)

New Names Old Names

1 Divine World Âdi Plane

2 Monadic World Anupâdaka

3 Spiritual World Âtmic or Nirvânic Plane

4 Intuitional World Buddhic Plane

5 Mental World Mental Plane

6 Emotional or Astral World Astral Plane

7 Physical World Physical Plane

These will supersede the names given in Vol. -II- of The Inner Life.

reality a Monad residing in the monadic world, shows himself as an ego in the higher mental world,manifesting these three aspects of himself (Spirit, Intuition and Intelligence) through that vehicle of highemental matter which we name the casual body.

This ego is the man during the human stage of evolution; he is the nearest correspondence, in fact, to

the ordinary unscientific conception of the soul. He lives unchanged (except for his growth) from themoment of individualization until humanity is transcended and merged into divinity. He is in no wayaffected by what we call birth and death; what we commonly consider as his life is only a day in his life.The body which we can see, the body which is born and dies, is a garment which he puts on for thepurposes of a certain part of his evolution.

Nor is it the only body which he assumes. Before he, the ego in the higher mental world, can take avehicle belonging to the physical world, he must make a connection with it through the lower mental and

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astral worlds. When he wishes to descend he draws around himself a veil of the matter of the lower mental world, which we call his mental body. This is the instrument by means of which he thinks all hisconcrete thoughts – abstract thought being a power of the ego himself in the higher mental world.

Next he draws round himself a veil of astral matter, which we call his astral body; and that is theinstrument of his passions and emotions, and also (in conjunction with the lower part of his mental body

(Page 43) the instrument of all such thought as is tinged by selfishness and personal feeling. Only after having assumed these intermediate vehicles can he come into touch with a baby physical body, and beborn into the world which we know. He lives through what we call his life, gaining certain qualities as theresult of its experiences; and at its end, when the physical body is worn out, he reverses the process of descent and lays aside one by one the temporary vehicles which he has assumed. The first to go is thephysical body, and when that is dropped, his life is centered in the astral world and he lives in his astralbody.

The length of his stay in that world depends upon the amount of passion and emotion which he hasdeveloped within himself in his physical life. If there is much of these the astral body is strongly vitalized

and will persist for a long time; if there is but little, the astral body has less vitality, and he will soon beable to cast that vehicle aside in turn. When that is done he finds himself living in his mental body. Thestrength of that depends upon the nature of the thoughts to which he had habituated himself, and usualhis stay at this level is a long one. At last it comes to an end, he casts aside the mental body in turn, andis once more the ego in his own world.

Owing to lack of development, he is as yet but partially conscious in that world; the vibrations of its mattare too rapid to make any impression upon him, just as the ultraviolet rays are too rapid to make anyimpression upon our eyes. After a rest there, he feels the desire to descend to a level where theundulations (Page 44) are perceptible to him, in order that he may feel himself to be fully alive; so he

repeats the process of descent into denser matter, and assumes once more a mental, an astral and aphysical body. As his previous bodies have all disintegrated, each in its turn, these new vehicles areentirely distinct from them, and thus it happens that in his physical life he has no recollection whatever oother similar lives which have preceded it.

When functioning in this physical world he remembers by means of his mental body; but since that is anew one, assumed only for this birth, it naturally cannot contain the memory of previous births in which had no part. The man himself, the ego, does remember them all when in his own world, and occasionallsome partial recollection of them or influence from them filters through into his lower vehicles. He doesnot usually, in his physical life, remember the experiences of earlier lives, but he does manifest in

physical life the qualities which those experiences have developed in him. Each man is therefore exactlywhat he has made himself during those past lives; if he has in them developed good qualities in himself,he possesses the good qualities now; if he neglected to train himself, and consequently left himself weaand of evil disposition, he finds himself precisely in that condition now. The qualities, good or evil, withwhich he is born are those which he has made for himself.

This development of the ego is the object of the whole process of materialization; he assumes thoseveils of matter precisely because through them he is able (Page 45) to receive vibrations to which he canrespond, so that his latent faculties may thereby be unfolded. Though man descends from on high into

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these lower worlds, it is only through that descent that a full cognizance of the higher worlds is developein him. Full consciousness in any given world involves the power to perceive and respond to all theundulations of that world; therefore the ordinary man has not yet perfect consciousness at any level – neven in this physical world which he thinks he knows. It is possible for him to unfold his percipience in althese worlds, and it is by means of such developed consciousness that we observe all these facts whichI am now describing.

The causal body is the permanent vehicle of the ego in the higher mental world. It consists of matter of the first, second and third subdivisions of that world. In ordinary people it is not yet fully active, only thatmatter which belongs to the third subdivision being vivified. As the ego unfolds his latent possibilitiesthrough the long course of his evolution, the higher matter is gradually brought into action, but it is only the perfected man whom we call the Adept that it is developed to its fullest extent. Such matter can bediscerned by clairvoyant sight, but only by a seer who knows how to use the sight of the ego.

It is difficult to describe a causal body fully, because the senses belonging to its world are altogether different from and higher than ours at this level. Such memory of the appearance of a causal body as it i

possible for a clairvoyant to bring into his physical brain represents it as ovoid, and as surrounding the(Page 46) physical body of the man, extending to a distance of about eighteen inches from the normalsurface of that body. In the case of primitive man it resembles a bubble, and gives the impression of being empty. It is in reality filled with higher mental matter, but as this is not yet brought into activity itremains colorless and transparent. As advancement continues it is gradually stirred into alertness byvibrations which reach it from the lower bodies. This comes but slowly, because the activities of man inthe earlier stages of his evolution are not of a character to obtain expression in matter so fine as that of the higher mental body; but when a man reaches the stage where he is capable either of abstractthought or of unselfish emotion the matter of the causal body is aroused into response.

When these rates of undulation are awakened within him they show themselves in his causal body ascolors, so that instead of being a mere transparent bubble it gradually becomes a sphere filled withmatter of the most lovely and delicate hues – an object beautiful beyond all conception. It is found byexperience that these colors are significant. The vibration which denotes the power of unselfish affectionshows itself as a pale rose-color; that which indicates high intellectual power is yellow; that whichexpresses sympathy is green, while blue betokens devotional feeling, and a luminous lilac-blue typifiesthe higher spirituality. The same scheme of color significance applies to the bodies which are built of denser matter, but as we approach the physical world the hues are in every case by comparison grosse– not only less delicate but also less living.(Page 47)

In the course of evolution in the lower worlds man often introduces into his vehicles qualities which areundesirable and entirely inappropriate for his life as an ego – such, for example, as pride, irritability,sensuality. These, like the rest, are reducible to vibrations, but they are in all cases vibrations of the lowesubdivisions of their respective worlds, and therefore they cannot reproduce themselves in the casualbody, which is built exclusively of the matter of the three higher subdivisions of its world. For each sectioof the astral body acts strongly upon the corresponding section of the mental body, but only upon thecorresponding section; it cannot influence any other part. So the casual body can be affected only by thethree higher portions of the astral body; and the oscillations of those represent only good qualities.

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The practical effect of this is that the man can build into the ego (that is, into his true self) nothing butgood qualities; the evil qualities which he develops are in their nature transitory and must be thrownaside as he advances, because he has no longer within him matter which can express them. Thedifference between the causal bodies of the savage and the saint is that the first is empty and colorless,while the second is full of brilliant coruscating tints. As the man passes beyond even sainthood andbecomes a great spiritual power, his causal body increases in size, because it has so much more toexpress, and it also begins to pour out from itself in all directions powerful rays of living light. In one who

has attained Adeptship this body is of enormous dimensions.

The mental body is built of matter of the four lower (Page 48) subdivisions of the mental world, andexpresses the concrete thoughts of the man. Here also we find the same color scheme as in the casualbody. The hues are somewhat less delicate, and we notice one or two additions. For example, a thoughof pride shows itself as orange, while irritability is manifested by a brilliant scarlet. We may see heresometimes the bright brown of avarice, the grey-brown of selfishness, and grey-green of deceit. Herealso we perceive the possibility of a mixture of colors; the affection, the intellect, the devotion may betinged by selfishness, and in that case their distinctive colors are mingled with the brown of selfishness,and so we have an impure and muddy appearance. Although its particles are always in intensely rapid

motion among themselves, this body has at the same time a kind of loose organization.

The size and shape of the mental body are determined by those of the causal vehicle. There are in itcertain striations which divide it more or less irregularly into segments, each of these corresponding to acertain department of the physical brain, so that every type of thought should function through its dulyassigned portion. The mental body is as yet so imperfectly developed in ordinary men that there aremany in whom a great number of special departments are not yet in activity, and any attempt at thoughtbelonging to those departments has to travel round through some inappropriate channel which happensto be fully open. The result is that thought on those subjects is for those people clumsy anduncomprehending. (Page 49) This is why some people have a head for mathematics and others are

unable to add correctly – why some people instinctively understand, appreciate and enjoy music, whileothers do not know one tune from another.

All the matter of the mental body should be circulating freely, but sometimes a man allows his thoughtupon a certain subject to set and solidify, and then the circulation is impeded, and there is congestionwhich presently hardens into a kind of wart on the mental body. Such a wart appears to us down here asa prejudice; and until it is absorbed and free circulation restored, it is impossible for man to think truly orto see clearly with regard to that particular department of his mind, as the congestion checks the freepassage of undulations both outward and inward.

When a man uses any part of his mental body it not only vibrates for the time more rapidly, but it alsotemporarily swells out and increases in size. If there is prolonged thought upon a subject this increasebecomes permanent, and it is thus open to any man to increase the size of his mental body either alongdesirable or undesirable lines.

Good thoughts produce vibrations of the finer matter of the body, which by its specific gravity tends tofloat in the upper part of the ovoid; whereas bad thoughts, such as selfishness and avarice, are alwaysoscillations of the grosser matter, which tends to gravitate towards the lower part of the ovoid.

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Consequently the ordinary man, who yields himself not infrequently to selfish thoughts to various kinds,usually (Page 50) expands the lower part of his mental body, and presents roughly the appearance of anegg with its larger end downwards. The man who has repressed those lower thoughts, and devotedhimself to higher ones, tends to expand the upper part of his mental body and therefore presents theappearance of an egg standing on its smaller end. From a study of the colors and striations of a man’smental body the clairvoyant can perceive his character and the progress he has made in his present lifeFrom similar features of the causal body he can see what progress the ego has made since its original

formation, when the man left the animal kingdom.

When a man thinks of any concrete object – a book, a house, a landscape – he builds a tiny image of thobject in the matter of his mental body. This image floats in the upper part of that body, usually in front othe face of the man and at about the level of the eyes. It remains there as long as the man iscontemplating the object, and usually for a little time afterwards, the length of time depending upon theintensity and the clearness of the thought. This form is quite objective, and can be seen by another person, if that other has developed the sight of his own mental body. If a man thinks of another, hecreates a tiny portrait in just the same way. If his thought is merely contemplative and involves no feeling(such as affection or dislike) or desires (such as a wish to see the person) the thought does not usually

perceptibly affect the man of whom he thinks.

If coupled with the thought of the person there is a (Page 51) feeling, as for example of affection, anotherphenomenon occurs besides the forming of the image. The thought of affection takes a definite form,which it builds out of the matter of the thinker’s mental body. Because of the emotion involved, it drawsround it also matter of his astral body, and thus we have an astro-mental form which leaps out of thebody in which it has been generated, and moves through space towards the object of the feeling of affection. If the thought is sufficiently strong, distance makes absolutely no difference to it; but thethought of an ordinary person is usually weak and diffused, and is therefore not effective outside a limitearea.

When this thought-form reaches its object it discharges itself into his astral and mental bodies,communicating to them its own rate of vibration. Putting this in another way, a thought of love sent fromone person to another involves the actual transference of a certain amount both of force and of matter from the sender to the recipient, and its effect upon the recipient is to arouse the feeling of affection inhim, and slightly but permanently to increase his power of loving. But such a thought also strengthens thpower of affection in the thinker, and therefore it does good simultaneously to both.

Every thought builds a form; if the thought be directed to another person it travels to him; if it be distinctl

selfish it remains in the immediate neighbourhood of the thinker; if it belongs to neither of thesecategories it floats for awhile in space and then slowly disintegrates. Every man therefore is leavingbehind (Page 52) him wherever he goes a trail of thought-forms; as we go along the street we are walkingall the same amidst a sea of other men’s thoughts. If a man leaves his mind blank for a time, theseresidual thoughts of others drifts through it, making in most cases but little impression upon him.Sometimes one arrives which attracts his attention, so that his mind seizes upon it and makes it its own,strengthens it by the addition of its force, and then casts it out again to affect somebody else. A man,therefore, is not responsible for a thought which floats into his mind, because it may be not his, butsomeone else’s, but he is responsible if he takes it up, dwells upon it and then sends it out strengthened

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Self-centered thought of any kind hangs about the thinker, and most men surround their mental bodieswith a shell of such thoughts. Such a shell obscures the mental vision and facilitates the formation of prejudice.

Each thought-form is a temporary entity. It resembles a charged battery, awaiting an opportunity todischarge itself. Its tendency is always to reproduce its own rate of vibration in the mental body upon

which it fastens itself, and so to arouse in it a like thought. If the person at whom it is aimed happens tobe busy, or already engaged in some definite train of thought, the particles of his mental body are alreadswinging at a certain determinate rate, and cannot for the moment be affected from without. In that casethe thought-form bides its time, hanging about its object until he is sufficiently at rest to permit itsentrance; (Page 53) then it discharges itself upon him, and in the act ceases to exist.

The self-centered thought behaves in exactly the same way with regard to its generator, and dischargesitself upon him when opportunity offers. If it be an evil thought he generally regards it as the suggestionof a tempting demon, whereas in truth he tempts himself. Usually each definite thought creates a newthought-form; but if a thought-form of the same nature is already hovering round the thinker, under

certain circumstances a new thought on the same subject, instead of creating a new form, coalesces witand strengthens the old one, so that by long brooding over the same subject a man may sometimescreate a thought-form of tremendous power. If the thought be a wicked one, such a thought-form maybecome a veritable evil influence, lasting perhaps for many years, and having for a time all theappearance and powers of a real living entity.

All these which have been described are the ordinary unpremeditated thoughts of man. A man can maka thought-form intentionally, and aim it at another with the object of helping him. This is one of the lines oactivity adopted by those who desire to serve humanity. A steady stream of powerful thought directedintelligently upon another person may be of the greatest assistance to him. A strong thought-form may b

a real guardian angel, and protect its object from impurity, from irritability or from fear.

An interesting branch of the subject is the study of the various shapes and colors taken by thought-form(Page 54) of different kinds. The colors indicate the nature of the thought, and are in agreement with thoswhich we have already described as existing in the bodies. The shapes are of infinite variety, but areoften in some way typical of the kind of thought which they express.

Every thought of definite character, such as a thought of affection or hatred, of devotion or suspicion, of anger or fear, of pride or jealousy, not only creates a form but also radiates an undulation. The fact thateach one of these thoughts is expressed by a certain color indicates that the thought expresses itself asan oscillation of the matter of a certain part of the mental body. This rate of oscillation communicatesitself to the surrounding mental matter precisely in the same way as the vibration of a bell communicateitself to the surrounding air.

This radiation travels out in all directions, and whenever it impinges upon another mental body in apassive or receptive condition it communicates to it something of its own vibration. This does not conveya definite complete idea, as does the thought-form, but it tends to produce a thought of the samecharacter as itself. For example, if the thought be devotional its undulations will excite devotion, but the

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object of worship may be different in the case of each person upon whose mental body they impinge. Ththought-form, on the other hand, can reach only one person, but will convey to that person (if receptive)not only a general devotional feeling, but also a precise image of the Being for whom the adoration wasoriginally felt.(Page 55)

Any person who habitually thinks pure, good and strong thoughts is utilizing for that purpose the higher

part of his mental body – a part which is not used at all by the ordinary man, and is entirely undevelopedin him. Such an one is therefore a power for good in the world, and is being of great use to all those of his neighbours who are capable of any sort of response. For the vibration which he sends out tends toarouse a new and higher part of their mental bodies, and consequently to open before them altogether new fields of thought.

It may not be exactly the same thought as that sent out, but it is of the same nature. The undulationsgenerated by a man thinking of Theosophy do not necessarily communicate theosophical ideas to allthose around him; but they do awaken in them more liberal and higher thought than that to which theyhave before been accustomed. On the other hand, the thought-forms generated under such

circumstances, though more limited in their action than the radiation, are also more precise; they canaffect only those who are to some extent open to them, but to them they will convey definiteTheosophical ideas.

The colors of the astral body bear the same meaning as those of the higher vehicles, but are severaloctaves of color below them, and much more nearly approaching to such hues as we see in the physicaworld. It is the vehicle of passion and emotion and consequently it may exhibit additional colors,expressing man’s less desirable feelings, which cannot show themselves at higher levels; for example, lurid brownish red indicates the presence of sensuality, while black (Page 56) clouds show malice andhatred. A curious livid grey betokens the presence of fear, and a much darker grey, usually arranged in

heavy rings around the ovoid, indicates a condition of depression. Irritability is shown by the presence oa number of small scarlet flecks in the astral body, each representing a small angry impulse. Jealousy isshown by a peculiar brownish-green, generally studded with the same scarlet flecks. The astral body is size and shape like those just described, and in the ordinary man its outline is usually clearly marked; bin the case of primitive man it is often exceedingly irregular, and resembles a rolling cloud composed of all the more unpleasant colors.

When the astral body is comparatively quiet (it is never actually at rest) the colors which are to be seen it indicate those emotions to which the man is most in the habit of yielding himself. When the manexperiences a rush of any particular feeling, the rate of vibration which expresses that feeling dominates

for a time the entire astral body. If, for example, it be devotion, the whole of his astral body is flushed witblue, and while the emotion remains at its strongest the normal colors do little more than modify the blueor appear faintly through a veil of it; but presently the vehemence of the sentiment dies away, and thenormal colors reassert themselves. But because of that spasm of emotion the part of the astral bodywhich is normally blue has been increased in size. Thus a man who frequently feels high devotion sooncomes to have a large area of blue permanently existing in his astral body.(Page 57)

When the rush of devotional feeling comes over him it is usually accompanied by thoughts of devotion.Although primarily formed in the mental body, these draw round themselves a large amount of astral

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matter as well, so that their action is in both worlds. In both worlds also is the radiation which waspreviously described, so that devotional man is a center of devotion, and will influence other people toshare both his thoughts and his feelings. The same is true in the case of affection, anger, depression –and, indeed, of all other feelings.

The flood of emotion does not itself greatly affect the mental body, although for a time it may render it

almost impossible for any activity from that mental body to come through into the physical brain. That isnot because that body itself is affected, but because the astral body, which acts as a bridge between itand the physical brain, is vibrating so entirely at one rate as to be incapable of conveying any undulationwhich is not in harmony with that.

The permanent colors of the astral body reacts upon the mental. They produce in it their correspondences, several octaves higher, in the same manner as a musical note produces overtones.The mental body in its turn reacts upon the causal in the same way, and thus all the good qualitiesexpressed in the lower vehicles by degrees establish themselves permanently in the ego. The evilqualities cannot do so, as the rates of vibration which express them are impossible for the higher menta

matter of which the causal body is constructed.(Page 58)

So far, we have described vehicles which are the expression of the ego in their respective worlds –vehicles which he provides for himself; in the physical world we come to a vehicle which is provided for him by nature under laws which will be explained later – which , though also in some sense anexpression of him, is by no means a perfect manifestation. In ordinary life we see only a small part of thiphysical body – only that which is built of the solid and liquid subdivisions of physical matter. The bodycontains matter of all the seven subdivisions, and all of them play their part in its life and are of equalimportance to it.

We usually speak of the invisible part of the physical body as the etheric double; “double” because itexactly reproduces the size and shape of the part of the body that we can see, and “etheric” because it ibuilt of that finer kind of matter by the vibrations of which light is conveyed to the retina of the eye. (Thismust not be confused with the true aether of space – that of which matter is the negation.) This invisiblepart of the physical body is of great importance to us, since it is the vehicle through which flow thestreams of vitality which keeps the body alive, and without it, as a bridge to convey undulations of thought and feeling from the astral to the visible denser physical matter, the ego could make no use of the cells of his brain.

The life of a physical body is one of perpetual change and in order that it shall live, it needs constantly tobe supplied from three distinct sources. It must have food for its digestion, air for its breathing, (Page 59)and vitality for its absorption. This vitality is essentially a force, but when clothed in matter it appears tous a definite element, which exists in all the worlds of which we have spoken. At the moment we areconcerned with that manifestation of it which we find in the highest subdivision of the physical world. Jusas the blood circulates through the veins, so does the vitality circulate along the nerves; and precisely aany abnormality in the flow of the blood at once affects the physical body so does the slightest irregulariin the absorption or flow of the vitality affect this higher part of the physical body.

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Vitality is a force which comes originally from the sun. When an ultimate physical atom is charged with itit draws round itself six other atoms and makes itself into an etheric element. The original force of vitalityis then subdivided into seven, each of the atoms carrying a separate charge. The element thus made isabsorbed into the human body through the etheric part of the spleen. It is there split up into itscomponent parts, which at once flow to the various parts of the body assigned to them. The spleen is onof the seven force-centers in the etheric part of the physical body. In each of our vehicles seven suchcenters should be in activity, and when they are thus active they are visible to clairvoyant sight. They

appear usually as shallow vortices, for they are the points at which the force from the higher bodiesenters the lower. In the physical body these centers are: (1) at the base of the spine, (2) at the solar plexus, (3) at the spleen, (4) over the heart, (5) at the throat, (Page 60 ) (6) between the eyebrows, and (7at the top of the head. There are other dormant centers, but their awakening is undesirable.

The shape of all the higher bodies as seen by the clairvoyant is ovoid, but the matter composing them isnot equally distributed throughout the egg. In the midst of this ovoid is the physical body. The physicalbody strongly attracts astral matter, and in its turn the astral matter strongly attracts mental matter.Therefore by far the greater part of the matter of the astral body is gathered within the physical frame;and the same is true of the mental vehicle. If we see the astral body of a man in its own world, apart from

the physical body, we shall still perceive the astral matter aggregated in exactly the shape of the physicaalthough, as the matter is more fluidic in its nature, what we see is a body built of dense mist, in the midsof an ovoid of much finer mist. The same is true for the mental body. Therefore, if in the astral or themental world we should meet an acquaintance, we should recognize him by his appearance just asinstantly as in the physical world.

This, then, is the true constitution of man. In the first place he is a Monad, a Spark of the Divine. Of thatMonad the ego is a partial expression, formed in order that he may enter evolution, and may return to thMonad with joy, bringing his sheaves with him in the shape of qualities developed by garneredexperience. The ego in his turn puts down part of himself for the same purpose into lower worlds, and w

call that part a personality, because the Latin word persona (Page 61) means a mask, and this personalitis the mask which the ego puts upon himself when he manifests in worlds lower than his own. Just as thego is a small part and an imperfect expression of the Monad, so is the personality a small part and animperfect expression of the ego; so that what we usually think of as the man is only in truth a fragment oa fragment.

The personality wears three bodies or vehicles, the mental, the astral and the physical. While the man iswhat we call alive and awake on the physical earth he is limited by his physical body, for he uses theastral and mental bodies only as bridges to connect himself with his lowest vehicle. One of the limitationof the physical body is that it quickly becomes fatigued and needs periodical rest. Each night the man

leaves it to sleep, and withdraws into his astral vehicle, which does not become fatigued, and thereforeneeds no sleep. During this sleep of the physical body the man is free to move about the astral world; buthe extent to which he does this depends upon his development. The primitive savage usually does notmove more than a few miles away from his sleeping physical form – often not as much as that; and hehas only the vaguest consciousness.

The educated man is generally able to travel in his astral vehicle wherever he will, and has much moreconsciousness in the astral world, though he has not often the faculty of bringing into his waking life anymemory of what he has seen and done while his physical body was asleep. Sometimes he does

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remember some incident which he has seen, some experience (Page 62) which he has had, and then hecalls it a vivid dream. More often his recollections are hopelessly entangled with vague memories of waking life, and with impressions made from without upon the etheric part of his brain. Thus we arrive atthe confused and often absurd dreams of ordinary life. The developed man becomes as fully consciousand active in the astral world as in the physical, and brings through into the latter full remembrance of what he has been doing in the former – that is, he has a continuous life without any loss of consciousness throughout the whole twenty-four hours, and thus throughout the whole of his physical

life, and even through death itself.(Page 63)

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CHAPTER VI

AFTER DEATH

Death is the laying aside of the physical body; but it makes no more difference to the ego than does the

laying aside of an overcoat to the physical man. Having put off his physical body, the ego continues tolive in his astral body until the force has become exhausted which has been generated by such emotionand passions as he has allowed himself to feel during earth life. When that has happened, the seconddeath takes place; the astral body also falls away from him, and he finds himself living in the mental bodand in the lower mental world. In that condition he remains until the thought forces generated during hisphysical and astral lives have worn themselves out; then he drops the third vehicle in its turn and remainonce more an ego in his own world, inhabiting his causal body.

There is, then, no such thing as death as it is ordinarily understood. There is only a succession of stagesin a continuous life – stages lived in the three worlds one after another. The apportionment of timebetween these three worlds varies much as man advances. The primitive man lives almost exclusively inthe physical world, spending only a few years in the astral at the end of each of his physical lives. As hedevelops, the astral life becomes longer, and as intellect (Page 64) unfolds in him, and he becomes able think, he begins to spend a little time in the mental world as well. The ordinary man of civilized racesremains longer in the mental world than in the physical and astral; indeed, the more a man evolves thelonger becomes his mental life and the shorter his life in the astral world.

The astral life is the result of all feelings which have in them the element of self. If they have been directselfish, they bring him into conditions of great unpleasantness in the astral world; if, though tinged withthoughts of self, they have been good and kindly they bring him a comparatively pleasant though stilllimited astral life. Such of his thoughts and feelings as have been entirely unselfish produce their result

his life in the mental world; therefore that life in the mental world cannot be other than blissful. The astralife, which the man has made for himself either miserable or comparatively joyous, corresponds to whatChristians call purgatory; the lower mental life, which is always entirely happy, is what is called heaven.

Man makes for himself his own purgatory and heaven, and these are not planes, but states of consciousness. Hell does not exist; it is only a figment of the theological imagination; but a man who livefoolishly may make for himself a very unpleasant and long-enduring purgatory. Neither purgatory nor heaven can ever be eternal, for a finite cause cannot produce an infinite result. The variations inindividual cases are so wide that to give actual figures is somewhat misleading. If we take the averageman of (Page 65) what is called the lower middle class, the typical specimen of which would be a small

shopkeeper or shop-assistant, his average life in the astral world would be perhaps about forty years,and the life in the mental world about two hundred. The man of spirituality and culture, on the other handmay have perhaps twenty years of life in the astral world and a thousand in the heaven life. One who isspecially developed may reduce the astral life to a few days or hours and spend fifteen hundred years inheaven.

Not only does the length of these periods vary greatly, but the conditions in both worlds also differ widelyThe matter of which all these bodies are built is not dead matter but living, and that fact has to be taken

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into consideration. The physical body is built up of cells, each of which is a tiny separate life animated bythe Second Outpouring, which comes forth from the Second Aspect of the Deity. These cells are of varying kinds and fulfill various functions, and all these facts must be taken into account if the manwishes to understand the work of his physical body and to live a healthy life in it.

The same thing applies to the astral and mental bodies. In the cell life which permeates them there is as

yet nothing in the way of intelligence, but there is a strong instinct always pressing in the direction of whis for its development. The life animating the matter of which such bodies are built is upon the outwardarc of evolution, moving downwards or outwards into matter, so that progress for it means to descendinto denser forms of matter, and to learn to express itself (Page 66) through them. Unfoldment for the mais just the opposite of this; he has already sunk deeply into matter and is now rising out of that towardshis source. There is consequently a constant conflict of interests between the man within and the lifeinhabiting the matter of his vehicles, inasmuch as its tendency is downward, while his is upward.

The matter of the astral body (or rather the life animating its molecules) desires for its evolution suchundulations as it can get, of as many different kinds as possible, and as coarse as possible. The next

step in its evolution will be to ensoul physical matter and become used to its still slower oscillations; andas a step on the way to that, it desires the grossest of the astral vibrations. It has not the intelligencedefinitely to plan for these; but its instinct helps it to discover how most easily to procure them.

The molecules of the astral body are constantly changing, as are those of the physical body, butnevertheless the life in the mass of those astral molecules has a sense, though a very vague sense, of itself as a whole – as a kind of temporary entity. It does not know that it is part of a man’s astral body; it quite capable of understanding what a man is; but it realizes in a blind way that under its presentconditions it receives many more waves, and much stronger ones, than it would receive if floating atlarge in the atmosphere. It would then only occasionally catch, as from a distance, the radiation of man’s

passions and emotions; now it is in the very heart of them, it can miss none, and it gets them at their strongest. Therefore it (Page 67) feels itself in a good position, and it makes an effort to retain thatposition. It finds itself in contact with something finer than itself – the matter of the man’s mental body;and it comes to feel that if it can contrive to involve that finer something in its own undulations, they willbe greatly intensified and prolonged.

Since astral matter is the vehicle of desire and mental matter is the vehicle of thought, this instinct, whetranslated into our language, means that if the astral body can induce us to think that we want what it wants, it is much more likely to get it. Thus it exercises a slow steady pressure upon the man – a kind ofhunger on its side, but for him a temptation to what is coarse and undesirable. If he be a passionate man

there is a gentle but ceaseless pressure in the direction of irritability; if he be a sensual man, an equallysteady pressure in the direction of impurity.

A man who does not understand this usually makes one of two mistakes with regard to it: either hesupposes it to be the prompting of his own nature, and therefore regards that nature as inherently evil; ohe thinks of the pressure as coming from outside – as temptation of an imaginary devil. The truth liesbetween the two. The pressure is natural, not to the man but to the vehicle which he is using; its desire inatural and right for it, but harmful to the man, and therefore it is necessary that he should resist it. If hedoes so resist, if he declines to yield himself to the feelings suggested to him, the particles within him

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which need those vibrations become apathetic for lack of nourishment, and eventually atrophy and fallout (Page 68) from his astral body, and are replaced by other particles, whose natural wave rate is morenearly in accordance with that which the man habitually permits within his astral body.

This gives the reason for what are called promptings of the lower nature during life. If the man yieldshimself to them, such promptings grow stronger and stronger until at least he feels as though he could

not resist them, and identifies himself with them – which is exactly what this curious half-life in theparticles of the astral body wants him to do.

At the death of the physical body this vague astral consciousness is alarmed. It realizes that its existencas a separated mass is menaced, and it takes instinctive steps to defend itself and to maintain itsposition as long as possible. The matter of the astral body is far more fluidic than that of the physical, anthis consciousness seizes upon its particles and disposes them so as to resist encroachment. It puts thegrossest and densest upon the outside as a kind of shell, and arranges the others in concentric layers, sthat the body as a whole may become as resistant to friction as its constitution permits, and maytherefore retain its shape as long as possible.

For the man this produces various unpleasant effects. The physiology of the astral body is quite differenfrom that of the physical; the latter acquires its information from without by means of certain organs whicare specialized as the instruments of its senses, but the astral body has no separated senses in our meaning of the word. That which for the astral body (Page 69) corresponds to sight is the power of itsmolecules to respond to impacts from without, which come to them by means of similar molecules. For example, a man has within his astral body matter belonging to all the subdivisions of the astral world, anit is because of that that he is capable of “seeing” objects built of the matter of any of these subdivisions

Supposing an astral object to be made of the matter of the second and third subdivisions mixed, a manliving in the astral world could perceive that object only if on the surface of his astral body there wereparticles belonging to the second and third subdivisions of that world which were capable of receivingand recording the vibrations which that object set up. A man who from the arrangement of his body by thvague consciousness of which we have spoken, had on the outside of that vehicle only the denser matteof the lowest subdivision, could no more be conscious of the object which we have mentioned than weare ourselves conscious in the physical body of the gases which move about us in the atmosphere or ofobjects built exclusively of etheric matter.

During physical life the matter of the man’s astral body is in constant motion, and its particles passamong one another much as do those of boiling water. Consequently at any given moment it is practicacertain that particles of all varieties will be represented on the surface of his astral body, and thattherefore when he is using his astral body during sleep he will be able to “see” by its means any astralobject which approaches him.(Page 70)

After death, if he has allowed the rearrangement to be made (as from ignorance, all ordinary persons dohis condition in this respect will be different. Having on the surface of his astral body only the lowest andgrossest particles, he can receive impressions only from corresponding particles outside; so that insteadof seeing the whole of the astral world about him, he will see only one-seventh of it, and that the denses

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and most impure. The vibrations of this heavier matter are the expressions only of objectionable feelingsand emotions, and of the least refined class of astral entities. Therefore it emerges that a man in thiscondition can see only the undesirable inhabitants of the astral world, and can feel only its mostunpleasant and vulgar influences.

He is surrounded by other men, whose astral bodies are probably of quite ordinary character; but since

he can see and feel only what is lowest and coarsest in them, they appear to him to be monsters of vicewith no redeeming features. Even his friends seem not at all what they used to be, because he is nowincapable of appreciating any of their better qualities. Under these circumstances it is little wonder that hconsiders the astral world a hell; yet the fault is in no way with the astral world, but with himself – first, foallowing himself so much of that ruder type of matter, and secondly, for letting that vague astralconsciousness dominate him and dispose it in that particular way.

The man who has studied these matters declines absolutely to yield to the pressure during life or topermit the rearrangement after death, and consequently he retains his power of seeing the astral worldas a (Page 71) whole, and not merely the cruder and baser part of it.

The astral world has many points in common with the physical; just like the physical, it presents differenappearances to different people, and even to the same person at different periods of his career. It is thehome of emotion and of lower thoughts; and emotions are much stronger in that world than in this. Whea person is awake we cannot see that larger part of his emotion at all; its strength goes in setting inmotion the gross physical matter of the brain. So if we see a man show affection here, what we can seeis not the whole of his affection, but only such part of it as is left after all this other work has been done.Emotions therefore bulk far more largely in the astral life than in the physical. They in no way excludehigher thought if they are controlled, so in the astral world as in the physical a man may devote himself tstudy and to helping his fellows, or he may waste his time and drift about aimlessly.

The astral world extends nearly to the mean distance of the orbit of the moon; but though the whole of this realm is open to any of its inhabitants who have not permitted the redistribution of their matter, thegreat majority remain much nearer to the surface of the earth. The matter of the different subdivisions ofthat world interpenetrates with perfect freedom, but there is on the whole a general tendency for thedenser matter to settle towards the center. The conditions are much like those which obtain in a bucketof water which contains in suspension a number of kinds of matter of different degrees of density. Sincethe water is kept in perpetual motion, the different kinds of matter (Page 72) are diffused through it; but inspite of that, the densest matter is found in greatest quantity nearest to the bottom. So that though wemust not at all think of the various subdivisions of the astral world as lying above one another as do the

coats of an onion, it is nevertheless true that the average arrangement of the matter of those subdivisionpartakes somewhat of that general character.

Astral matter interpenetrates physical matter precisely as though it were not there, but each subdivisionof physical matter has a strong attraction for astral matter of the corresponding subdivision. Hence itarises that every physical body has its astral counterpart. If I have a glass of water standing upon a tablethe glass and the table, being of physical matter in the solid state, are interpenetrated by astral matter othe lowest subdivision. The water in the glass, being liquid, is interpenetrated by astral matter of the sixtsubdivision; whereas the air surrounding both, being physical matter in the gaseous condition, is entire

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interpenetrated by astral gaseous matter – that is, astral matter of the fifth subdivision.

But just as air, water, glass and table are alike interpenetrated all the time by the finer physical matter which we have called etheric, so are all the astral counterparts interpenetrated by the finer astral matterof the higher subdivisions which correspond to the etheric. But even the astral solid is less dense thanthe finest of the physical ethers.

The man who finds himself in the astral world after (Page 73) death, if he has not submitted to therearrangement of the matter of his body, will notice but little difference from physical life. He can floatabout in any direction at will, but in actual fact he usually stays in the neighbourhood to which he isaccustomed. He is still able to perceive his house, his room, his furniture, his relations, his friends. Theliving, when ignorant of the higher worlds, suppose themselves to have “lost” those who have laid asidetheir physical bodies; but the dead are never for a moment under the impression that they have lost theliving.

Functioning as they are in the astral body, the dead can no longer see the physical bodies of those whothey have left behind; but they do see their astral bodies, and as those are exactly the same in outline asthe physical, they are perfectly aware of the presence of their friends. They see each one surrounded bya faint ovoid of luminous mist, and if they happen to be observant, they may notice various other smallchanges in the surroundings; but it is at least quite clear to them that they have not gone away to somedistant heaven or hell, but still remain in touch with the world which they know, although they see it at asomewhat different angle.

The dead man has the astral body of his living friends obviously before him, so he cannot think of him aslost; but while the friend is awake, the dead man will not be able to make any impression upon him, for

the consciousness of the friend is then in the physical world, and his astral body is being used only as abridge. The dead man cannot therefore communicate (Page 74) with his friend, nor can he read his friendhigher thoughts; but he will see by the change in color in the astral body any emotion which that friendmay feel, and with a little practice and observation he may easily learn to read all those thoughts of hisfriend which have in them anything of self or of desire.

When the friend falls asleep the whole position is changed. He is then also conscious in the astral worldside by side with the dead man, and they can communicate in every respect as freely as they couldduring physical life. The emotions felt by the living react strongly upon the dead who love them. If theformer give way to grief, the latter cannot but suffer severely.

The conditions of life after death are almost infinite in their variety, but they can be calculated withoutdifficulty by any one who will take the trouble to understand the astral world and to consider the characteof the person concerned. That character is not in the slightest degree changed by death; the man’sthoughts, emotions and desires are exactly the same as before. He is in every way the same man, minuhis physical body, and his happiness or misery depends upon the extent to which this loss of the physicabody affects him.

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If his longings have been such as need a physical body for their gratification, he is likely to suffer considerably. Such a craving manifests itself as a vibration in the astral body, and while we are still in thworld most of its strength is employed in setting in motion the heavy physical particles. Desire istherefore (Page 75) a far greater force in the astral life than in the physical, and if the man has not been inthe habit of controlling it, and if in this new life it cannot be satisfied, it may cause him great and long-continued trouble.

Take as an illustration the extreme case of a drunkard or a sensualist. Here we have a lust which hasbeen strong enough during physical life to overpower reason, common-sense and all the feelings of decency and of family affection. After death the man finds himself in the astral world feeling the appetiteperhaps a hundred times more strongly, yet absolutely unable to satisfy it because he has lost thephysical body. Such a life is a very real hell – the only hell there is; yet no one is punishing him; he isreaping the perfectly natural result of his own action. Gradually as time passes this force of desire wearsout, but only at the cost of terrible suffering for the man, because to him every day seems as a thousandyears. He has no measure of time such as we have in the physical world. He can measure it only by hissensations. From a distortion of this fact has come the blasphemous idea of eternal damnation.

Many other cases less extreme than this will readily suggest themselves, in which a hankering whichcannot be fulfilled may prove itself a torture. A more ordinary case is that of a man who has no particulavices, such as drink or sensuality, but yet has been attached entirely to things of the physical world, andhas lived a life devoted to business or to aimless social functions. For him the astral world is a place of (Page 76) weariness; the only things for which he craves are no longer possible for him, for in the astralworld there is no business to be done, and, though he may have as much companionship as he wishes,society is now for him a very different matter, because all the pretences upon which it is usually based inthis world are no longer possible.

These cases, however, are only the few, and for most people the state after death is much happier thanlife upon earth. The first feeling of which the dead man is usually conscious is one of the most wonderfuand delightful freedom. He has absolutely nothing to worry about, and no duties rest upon him, exceptthose which he chooses to impose upon himself. For all but a very small minority, physical life is spent indoing what the man would much rather not do; but he has to do it in order to support himself or his wifeand family. In the astral world no support is necessary; food is no longer needed, shelter is not required,since he is entirely unaffected by heat or cold; and each man by the mere exercise of his thought clothehimself as he wishes. For the first time since early childhood the man is entirely free to spend the wholeof his time in doing exactly just what he likes.

His capacity for every kind of enjoyment is greatly enhanced, if only that enjoyment does not need aphysical body for expression. If he loves the beauties of Nature, it is now within his power to travel withgreat rapidity and without fatigue over the whole world, to contemplate all its loveliest spots, and toexplore its most secret recesses. If he delights in art, (Page 77) all the world’s masterpieces are at hisdisposal. If he loves music, he can go where he will to hear it, and it will now mean much more to himthan it has ever meant before; for though he can no longer hear the physical sounds, he can receive thewhole effect of the music into himself in far fuller measure than in this lower world. If he is a student of science, he not only can visit the great scientific men of the world, and catch from them such thoughtsand ideas as may be within his comprehension, but also he can undertake the researches of his own intthe science of this higher world, seeing much more of what he is doing than has ever before been

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possible to him. Best of all, he whose great delight in this world has been to help his fellow men will stillfind ample scope for his philanthropic efforts.

Men are no longer hungry, cold, or suffering from disease in this astral world; but there are vast numberswho, being ignorant, desire knowledge – who, being still in the grip of desire for earthly things, need theexplanation which will turn their thought to higher levels – who have entangled themselves in a web of

their own imaginings, and can be set free only by one who understands these new surroundings and cahelp them distinguish the facts of the world from their own ignorant misrepresentation of them. All thesecan be helped by the man of intelligence and of kindly heart. Many men arrive in the astral world in utterignorance of its conditions, not realizing at first that they are dead, and when they do realize it fearing thfate that may be in store for them, because of false (Page 78) and wicked theological teaching. All of thesneed the cheer and comfort which can only be given to them by a man of common sense who possessesome knowledge of the facts of nature.

There is thus no lack of the most profitable occupation for any man whose interests during his physicallife have been rational; nor is there any lack of companionship. Men whose tastes and pursuits are

similar drift naturally together there just as they do here; and many realms of Nature, which during our physical life are concealed by the dense veil of matter, now lie open for the detailed study of those whocare to examine them.

To a large extent people make their own surroundings. We have already referred to the sevensubdivisions of this astral world. Numbering these from the highest and least material downwards, wefind that they fall naturally into three classes – division one, two and three forming one such class, andfour, five and six another; while the seventh and lowest of all stands alone. As I have said, although theyall interpenetrate, their substance has a general tendency to arrange itself according to its specificgravity, so that most of the matter belonging to the higher subdivisions is found at a greater elevation

above the surface of the earth than the bulk of the matter of the lower portions.

Hence, although any person inhabiting the astral world can move into any part of it, his natural tendencyis to float at the level which corresponds with the specific gravity of the heaviest matter in his astral (Pag79) body. The man who has not permitted the rearrangement of the matter of his astral body after death entirely free of the whole astral world; but the majority, who do permit it, are not equally free – notbecause there is anything to prevent them from rising to the highest level or sinking to the lowest, butbecause they are able to sense clearly only a certain part of that world.

I have described something of the fate of a man who is on the lowest level, shut in by a strong shell of coarse matter. Because of the extreme comparative density of that matter he is conscious of less outsidof his own subdivision than a man at any other level. The general specific gravity of his own astral bodytends to make him float below the surface of the earth. The physical matter of the earth is absolutely nonexistent to his astral senses, and his natural attraction is to that least delicate form of astral matter whichis the counterpart of that solid earth. A man who has confined himself to that lowest subdivision willtherefore usually find himself floating in darkness and cut off to a great extent from others of the dead,whose lives have been such as to keep them on a higher level.

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Divisions four, and six of the astral world (to which most people are attracted) have for their backgroundthe astral counterpart of the physical world in which we live, and all its familiar accessories. Life in thesixth subdivision is simply like our ordinary life on this earth minus the physical body and its necessitieswhile as it ascends through the fifth and (Page 80) fourth divisions it becomes less and less material and more and more withdrawn from our lower world and its interests.

The first, second and third sections, though occupying the same space, yet give the impression of beingmuch further removed from the physical, and correspondingly less material. Men who inhabit these levelose sight of the earth and its belongings; they are usually deeply self-absorbed, and to a large extentcreate their own surroundings, though these are sufficiently objective to be perceptible to other men of their level, and also to clairvoyant vision.

This region is the summerland of which we hear in spiritualistic circles – the world in which, by theexercise of their thought, the dead call into temporary existence their houses and schools and cities.These surroundings, though fanciful from our point of view, are to the dead as real as houses, temples ochurches built of stone are to us, and many people live very contentedly there for a number of years in

the midst of all these thought creations.

Some of the scenery thus produced is very beautiful; it includes lovely lakes, magnificent mountains,pleasant gardens, decidedly superior to anything in the physical world; though on the other hand it alsocontains much which to the trained clairvoyant (who has learned to see things as they are) appearsridiculous – as, for example, the endeavors of the unlearned to make a thought form of some of thecurious symbolic descriptions contained in their various scriptures. An ignorant peasant’s thought imageof a beast full of (Page 81) eyes within, or of a sea of glass mingled with fire, is naturally often grotesque,although to its maker it is perfectly satisfactory. This astral world is full of thought-created figures andlandscapes. Men of all religions image here their deities and their respective conceptions of paradise,

and enjoy themselves greatly among these dream forms until they pass into the mental world and comeinto touch with something nearer to reality.

Every one after death – any ordinary person, that is, in whose case the rearrangement of the matter of the astral body has been made – has to pass through all these subdivisions in turn. It does not follow thaevery one is conscious in all of them. The ordinary decent person has in his astral body but little of thematter of its lowest portion – by no means enough to construct a heavy shell. The redistribution puts onthe outside of the body its densest matter; in the ordinary man this is usually matter of the sixthsubdivision, mixed with a little of the seventh, and so he finds himself viewing the counterpart of thephysical world.

The ego is steadily withdrawing into himself, and as he withdraws he leaves behind him level after levelof this astral matter. So the length of the man’s detention in any section of the astral world is precisely inproportion to the amount of its matter which is found in his astral body, and that in turn depends upon thlife he has lived, the desires he has indulged, and the class of matter which by so doing he has attractedtowards him and built into himself. Finding (Page 82) himself then in the sixth section, still hovering aboutthe places and persons with which he was most closely connected while on earth, the average man astime passes on finds the earthly surroundings gradually growing dimmer and becoming of less and lessimportance to him, and he tends more and more to mould his entourage into agreement with the more

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persistent of his thoughts. By the time that he reaches the third level he finds that this characteristic hasentirely superseded the vision of the realities of the astral world.

The second subdivision is a shade less material than the third, for if the latter is the summerland of thespiritualists, the former is the material heaven of the more ignorant orthodox; while the first or highestlevel appears to be the special home of those who during life have devoted themselves to materialistic

but intellectual pursuits, following them not for the sake of benefiting their fellow men, but either frommotives of selfish ambition or simply for the sake of intellectual exercise. All these people are perfectlyhappy. Later on they will reach a stage when they can appreciate something much higher, and when thastage comes they will find the higher ready for them.

In this astral life people of the same nation and of the same interests tend to keep together, precisely asthey do here. The religious people, for example, who imagine for themselves a material heaven, do not all interfere with men of other faiths whose ideas of celestial joy are different. There is nothing to preventa Christian from drifting into the heaven of the Hindu (Page 83) or the Mohammedan, but he is little likelyto do so, because his interests and attractions are all in the heaven of his own faith, along with friends

who have shared that faith with him. This is by no means the true heaven described by any of thereligions, but only a gross and material misrepresentation of it; the real thing will be found when we comto consider the mental world.

The dead man who has not permitted the rearrangement of the matter of his astral body is free of theentire world, and can wander all over it at will, seeing the whole of whatever he examines, instead of onla part of it as the others do. He does not find it inconveniently crowded, for the astral world is much largethan the surface of the physical earth, while its population is somewhat smaller, because the average lifeof humanity in the astral world is shorter than the average of the physical.

Not only the dead, however, are the inhabitants of this astral world, but always about one third of theliving as well, who have temporarily left their physical bodies behind them in sleep. The astral world hasalso a great number of non-human inhabitants, some of them far below the level of man, and someconsiderably above him. The nature spirits form an enormous kingdom, some of whose members exist ithe astral world, and make a large part of its population. This vast kingdom exists in the physical worldalso, for many of its orders wear etheric bodies, and are only just beyond the range of ordinary physicalsight. Indeed, circumstances not infrequently occur under (Page 84) which they can be seen, and in manlonely mountain districts these appearances are traditional among the peasants, by whom they arecommonly spoken of as fairies, good people, pixies or brownies.

They are protéan, but usually prefer to wear a miniature human form. Since they are not yetindividualized, they may be thought of almost as etheric and astral animals; yet many of them areintellectually quite equal to average humanity. They have their nations and types just as we have, andthey are often grouped into four great classes, and called the spirits of earth, water, fire and air. Only themembers of the last of these four divisions normally reside in the astral world, but their numbers as soprodigious that they are everywhere present in it.

Another great kingdom has its representatives here – the kingdom of the angels (called in India the

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devas). This is a body of beings who stand far higher in evolution than man, and only the lowest fringe otheir hosts touches the astral world – a fringe whose constituent members are perhaps at about the leveof development of what we should call a distinctly good man.

We are neither the only nor even the principal inhabitants of our solar system; there are other lines of evolution running parallel with our own which do not pass through humanity at all, though they must all

pass through a level corresponding to that of humanity. On one of these other lines of evolution are thenature spirits above described, and at a higher level of that line comes this great kingdom of the angels.(Page 85 ) At our present level of evolution they come into obvious contact with us only very rarely, but aswe develop we shall be likely to see more of them - especially as the cyclic progress of the world is nowbringing it more and more under the influence of the Seventh Ray. This Seventh Ray has ceremonial forone of its characteristics, and it is through ceremonial such as that of the Church or of Free-masonry thawe come most easily into touch with the angelic kingdom.

When all the man’s lower emotions have worn themselves out – all emotions, I mean, which have inthem any thought of self – his life in the astral world is over, and the ego passes on into the mental world

This is not in any sense a movement in space; it is simply that the steady process of withdrawal has nowpassed beyond even the finest kind of astral matter; so that the man’s consciousness is focused in themental world. His astral body has not entirely disintegrated, though it is in process of doing so, and heleaves behind him an astral corpse, just as at a previous stage of the withdrawal he left behind him aphysical corpse. There is a certain difference between the two which should be noticed, because of theconsequences which ensue from it.

When the man leaves his physical body his separation from it should be complete, and generally is so;but this is not the case with the much finer matter of the astral body. In the course of his physical life theordinary man usually entangles himself so much in astral matter (which, from another point of view,

means that he identifies himself so closely with his lower desires) that the indrawing force of the egocannot entirely separate him from it again. Consequently, when he finally breaks away from the astralbody and transfers his activities to the mental, he loses a little of himself, he leaves some of himself behind imprisoned in the matter of the astral body. Page 86)

( This gives a certain remnant of vitality to the astral corpse, so that it still moves freely in the astral worldand may easily be mistaken by the ignorant for the man himself – the more so as such fragmentaryconsciousness as still remains to it is part of the man, and therefore it naturally regards itself and speakof itself as the man. It retains his memories but is only a partial and unsatisfactory representation of himSometimes in spiritualistic sйances one comes into contact with an entity of this description, and wonde

how it is that one’s friend has deteriorated so much since his death. To this fragmentary entity we give thname “shade”.

At a later stage even this fragment of consciousness dies out of the astral body, but does not return tothe ego to whom it originally belonged. Even then the astral corpse still remains, but when it is quitewithout any trace of its former life we call it a “shell”. Of itself a shell cannot communicate at a sйance, otake any action of any sort; but such shells are frequently seized upon by sportive nature spirits and useas temporary habitations. A shell so occupied can communicate at a sйance and masquerade as itsoriginal owner, since some of his characteristics and certain portions of his memory can be evoked by th

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nature spirit from his astral corpse.

When a man falls asleep, he withdraws in his astral body, leaving the whole of the physical vehiclebehind him. When he dies, he draws out with him the etheric part of the physical body, and consequentlhas usually at least a moment of unconsciousness (Page 87) while he is freeing himself from it. The etherdouble is not a vehicle, and cannot be used as such; so when the man is surrounded by it, he is for the

moment able to function neither in the physical world nor the astral. Some men succeed in shakingthemselves free of this etheric envelope in a few minutes; other rest within it for hours, days or evenweeks.

Nor is it certain that, when the man is free from this, he will at once become conscious of the astral worldFor there is in him a good deal of the lowest kind of astral matter, so that a shell of this may be madearound him. But he may be quite unable to use that matter. If he had lived a reasonably decent life he islittle in the habit of employing it or responding to its vibrations, and he cannot instantly acquire this habitFor that reason, he may remain unconscious until that matter gradually wears away, and some matter which he is in the habit of using comes on the surface. Such an occlusion, however, is scarcely ever

complete, for even in the most carefully made shell some particles of the finer matter occasionally findtheir way to the surface and give him fleeting glimpses of his surroundings.

There are some men who cling so desperately to their physical vehicles that they will not relax their holdupon the etheric double, but strive with all their might to retain it. They may be successful in doing so fora considerable time, but only at the cost of great discomfort to themselves. They are shut out from bothworlds, to find themselves surrounded by a dense grey mist, through which they see very (Page 88) dimlythe things of the physical world, but with all the color gone from them. It is a terrible struggle to them tomaintain their position in this miserable condition, and yet they will not relax their hold upon the ethericdouble, feeling that that is at least some sort of link with the only world that they know. Thus they drift

about in a condition of loneliness and misery until from sheer fatigue their hold fails them, and they slipinto the comparative happiness of astral life. Sometimes in their desperation they grasp blindly at other bodies, and try to enter into them, and occasionally they are successful in such an attempt. They mayseize upon a baby body, ousting the feeble personality for whom it was intended, or sometimes theygrasp even the body of an animal. All this trouble arises entirely from ignorance, and it can never happeto anyone who understands the laws of life and death.

When the astral life is over, the man dies to that world in turn, and awakens in the mental world. With himit is not at all what it is to the trained clairvoyant, who ranges through it and lives amidst the surroundingwhich he finds there, precisely as he would in the physical or astral worlds. The ordinary man has all

through his life been encompassing himself with a mass of thought-forms. Some which are transitory, towhich he pays little attention, have fallen away from his long ago, but those which represent the maininterests of his life are always with him, and grow ever stronger and stronger. If some of these have beeselfish, their force pours down into astral matter, and he has exhausted (Page 89) them during his life inthe astral world. But those which are entirely unselfish belong purely to his mental body, and so when hefinds himself in the mental world it is through these special thoughts that he is able to appreciate it.

His mental body is by no means fully developed; only those parts of it are really in action to their fullestextent which he has used in this altruistic manner. When he awakens again after the second death his

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first sense is one of indescribable bliss and vitality – a feeling of such utter joy in living that he needs for the time nothing but just to live. Such bliss is of the essence of life in all the higher worlds of the system.Even astral life has possibilities of happiness far greater than anything that we can know in the densebody; but the heaven life in the mental world is out of all proportions more blissful than the astral. In eachhigher world the same experience is repeated. Merely to live in any one them seems the uttermostconceivable bliss; and yet, when the next one is reached, it is seen that it far surpasses the last.

Just as the bliss increases, so does the wisdom and the breadth of view. A man fusses about in thephysical world and thinks himself so busy and so wise; but when he touches even the astral, he realizesat once that he has been all the time only a caterpillar crawling about and seeing nothing but his ownleaf, whereas now he has spread his wings like the butterfly and flown away into the sunshine of a widerworld. Yet, impossible as it may seem, the same experience is repeated when he passes into the (Page90) mental world, for this life is in turn so much fuller and wider and more intense than the astral that oncmore no comparison is possible. And yet beyond all these there is still another life, that of the intuitionalworld, unto which even this is but as moonlight unto sunlight.

The man’s position in the mental world differs widely from that in the astral. There he was using a body twhich he was thoroughly accustomed, a body which he had been in the habit of employing every nightduring sleep. Here he finds himself living in a vehicle which he has never used before – a vehiclefurthermore which is very far from being fully developed – a vehicle which shuts him out to a great extenfrom the world about him, instead of enabling him to see it. The lower part of his nature burnt itself awayduring his purgatorial life, and now there remains to him only his higher and more refined thoughts, thenoble and unselfish aspirations which he poured out during earth life. These cluster round him, and maka sort of shell about him, through the medium of which he is able to respond to certain types of vibrationin this refined matter.

These thoughts which surround him are the powers by which he draws upon the wealth of the heaven-world, and he finds it to be a storehouse of infinite extent, upon which he is able to draw just according tthe power of those thoughts and aspirations; for in this world is existing the infinite fullness of the DivineMind, open in all its limitless affluence to every soul, just in proportion as that soul has qualified itself toreceive. A man who has already completed (Page 91) his human evolution, who has fully realized andunfolded the divinity whose germ is within him, finds the whole of this glory within his reach; but sincenone of us has yet done that, since we are only gradually rising toward that splendid consummation, itfollows that none of us as yet can grasp that entirety.

But each draws from it and cognizes so much of it as he has by previous effort prepared himself to take

Different individuals bring different capacities; they tell us in the East that each man brings his own cup,and some of the cups are large and some are small, but small or large every cup is filled to its utmostcapacity; the sea of bliss holds far more than enough for all.

A man can look out upon this glory and beauty only through the windows which he himself has made.Every one of these thought-forms is such a window, through which response may come to him from theforces without. If during his earth life he has chiefly regarded physical things, then he has made for himself but few windows through which this higher glory can shine in upon him. Yet every man who isabove the lowest savage must have had some touch of pure unselfish feeling, even if it were but once in

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all his life, and that will be a window for him now.

The ordinary man is not capable of any great activity in this mental world; his condition is chieflyreceptive, and his vision of anything outside his own shell of thought is of the most limited character. Heis surrounded by living forces, mighty angelic inhabitants of this glorious world, and many of their (Page92) orders are very sensitive to certain aspirations of man and readily respond to them. But a man can

take advantage of these only in so far as he has already prepared himself to profit by them, for histhoughts and aspirations are only along certain lines, and he cannot suddenly form new lines. There aremany directions which the higher thought may take – some of them personal and some impersonal.Among the latter are art, music and philosophy; and a man whose interest lay along any one of theselines finds both measureless enjoyment and unlimited instruction waiting for him – that is, the amount ofenjoyment and instruction is limited only by his power of perception.

We find a large number of people whose only higher thoughts are those connected with affection anddevotion. If a man loves another deeply or if he feels strong devotion to a personal deity, he makes astrong mental image of that friend or the deity, and the object of his feeling is often present in his mind.

Inevitably he takes that mental image into the heaven world with him, because it is to that level of matterthat it naturally belongs.

Take first the feeling of affection. The love which forms and retains such an image is very powerful force– a force which is strong enough to reach and to act upon the ego of his friend in the higher part of themental world. It is that ego that is the real man whom he loves – not the physical body which is so partiaa representation of him. The ego of the friend, feeling this vibration, at once and eagerly responds to it,and pours himself into the thought (Page 93) form which has been made for him; so that the man’s friendis truly present with him more vividly than ever before. To this result it makes no difference whatever whether the friend is what we call living or dead; the appeal is made not to the fragment of the friend

which is sometimes imprisoned in a physical body, but to the man himself on his own true level; and healways responds. A man who has a hundred friends can simultaneously and fully respond to the affectioof every one of them, for no number of representations on a lower level can exhaust the infinity of theego.

Thus every man in his heaven life has around him all the friends for whose company he wishes, and theare for him always at their best, because he himself makes for them in the thought-form through whichthey manifest to him. In our limited physical world we are so accustomed to thinking of our friend as onlythe limited manifestation which we know in the physical world, that it is at first difficult for us to realize thgrandeur of the conception; when we can realize it, we shall see how much nearer we are in truth to our

friends in the heaven life than we ever were on earth. The same is true in the case of devotion. The manin the heaven world is two great stages nearer to the object of his devotion than he was during physicallife, and so his experiences are of a far more transcendent character.

In this mental world, as in the astral, there are seven subdivisions. The first, second and third are thehabitat of the ego in his causal body, so the mental body contains matter of the remaining four only, (Pag94) and it is in those sections that his heaven life is passed. Man does not, however, pass from one to thother of these, as in the case in the astral world, for there is nothing in this life corresponding to therearrangement. Rather is the man drawn to the level which best corresponds to the degree of his

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development, and on that level he spends the whole of his life in the mental body. Each man makes hisown conditions, so that the number of varieties is infinite.

Speaking broadly, we may say that the dominant characteristic observed in the lowest portion is unselfisfamily affection. Unselfish it must be, or it would find no place here; all selfish tinges, if there were any,worked out their results in the astral world. The dominant characteristic of the sixth level may be said to

be anthropomorphical religious devotion; whilst that of the fifth section is devotion expressing itself inactive work of some sort. All these – the fifth, sixth and seventh subdivisions – are concerned with theworking out of devotion to personalities (either to one’s family and friends or to a personal deity) rather than the wider devotion to humanity for its own sake, which finds its expression in the next section. Theactivities of this fourth stage are varied. They can best be arranged in four main divisions: unselfishpursuit of spiritual knowledge; high philosophy or scientific thought; literary or artistic ability exercised founselfish purposes; and service for the sake of service.

Even to this glorious heaven life there comes an (Page 95) end, and then the mental body in its turn dropaway as the others have done, and the man’s life in his causal body begins. Here the man needs no

windows, for this is his true home and all his walls have fallen away. The majority of men have as yet buvery little consciousness at such a height as this; they rest dreamily unobservant and scarcely awake, bsuch vision as they have is true, however limited it may be by their lack of development. Still, every timethey return, these limitations will be smaller, and they themselves will be greater; so that this truest lifewill be wider and fuller for them.

As this improvement continues, this casual life grows longer and longer, assuming an ever larger proportion as compared to the existence at lower levels. And as he grows, the man becomes capable noonly of receiving but also of giving. Then indeed is his triumph approaching, for he is learning the lessonof the Christ, learning the crowning glory of sacrifice, the supreme delight of pouring out all his life for th

helping of his fellow-men, the devotion of the self to the all, of celestial strength to human service, of allthose splendid heavenly forces to the aid of the struggling sons of earth. That is part of the life that liesbefore us; these are some of the steps which even we who are still so near the bottom of the goldenladder may see rising above us, so that we may report them to those who have not seen as yet, in orderthat they too may open their eyes to the unimaginable splendor which surrounds them here and now inthis dull daily life. This is a part of the (Page 96) gospel of Theosophy – the certainty of this sublime futurefor all. It is certain because it is here already; because to inherit it we have only to fit ourselves for it. (Page 97)

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CHAPTER VII

REINCARNATION

This life of the ego in his own world, which is so glorious and so fully satisfying for the developed man,

plays but a very small part in the life of the ordinary person, for in his case the ego has not yet reached asufficient stage of development to be awake in his causal body. In obedience to the law of nature he haswithdrawn into it, but in doing so he has lost the sensation of vivid life, and restless desire to feel thisonce more pushes him in the direction of another descent into matter.

This is the scheme of evolution appointed for man at the present stage – that he shall develop bydescending into grosser matter, and then ascend to carry back into himself the result of the experiencesso obtained. His real life, therefore, covers millions of years, and what we are in the habit of calling a lifeis only one day of this greater existence. Indeed, it is in reality only a small part of one day; for a life of seventy years in the physical world is often succeeded by a period of twenty times that length spent inhigher spheres.

Every one of us has a long line of these physical lives behind him, and the ordinary man has a fairly longline still in front of him. Each of such lives is a day at school. The ego puts upon himself his garment of flesh and goes forth into the school of (Page 98) the physical world to learn certain lessons. He learnsthem, or does not learn them, or partially learns them, as the case may be, during his school day of eartlife; then he lays aside the vesture of the flesh and returns home to his own level for rest andrefreshment. In the morning of each new life he takes up again his lesson at the point where he left it thenight before. Some lessons he may be able to learn in one day, while others may take him many days.

If he is an apt pupil and learns quickly what is needed, if he obtains an intelligent grasp of the rules of thschool, and takes the trouble to adapt his conduct to them, his school life is comparatively short, andwhen it is over he goes forth fully equipped into the real life of the higher worlds for which all this is only preparation. Other egos are duller boys who do not learn so quickly; some of them do not understand thrules of the school, and through that ignorance are constantly breaking them; others are wayward, andeven when they see the rules they cannot at once bring themselves to act in harmony with them. All of these have a longer school life, and by their own actions they delay their entry upon the real life of thehigher worlds.

For this is a school in which no pupil ever fails; every one must go on to the end. He has no choice as to

that; but the length of time which he will take in qualifying himself for the higher examinations is leftentirely to his own discretion. The wise pupil, seeing that school life is not a thing in itself, but (Page 99)only a preparation for a more glorious and far wider life, endeavors to comprehend as fully as possiblethe rules of his school, and shapes his life in accordance with them as closely as he can, so that no timemay be lost in the learning of whatever lessons are necessary. He co-operates intelligently with theTeachers, and sets himself to do the maximum of work which is possible for him, in order that as soon ahe can he may come of age and enter into his kingdom as a glorified ego.

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Theosophy explains to us the laws under which this school life must be lived, and in that way gives agreat advantage to its students. The first great law is that of evolution. Every man has to become aperfect man, to unfold to the fullest degree the divine possibilities which lie latent within him, for thatunfoldment is the object of the entire scheme so far as he is concerned. This law of evolution steadilypresses him onward to higher and higher achievements. The wise man tries to anticipate its demands –to run ahead of the necessary curriculum, for in that way he not only avoids all collision with it, but heobtains the maximum of assistance from its action. The man who lags behind in the race of life finds its

steady pressure constantly constraining him – a pressure which, if resisted, rapidly becomes painful.Thus the laggard on the path of evolution has always the sense of being hunted and driven by fate, whilthe man who intelligently co-operates is left perfectly free to choose the direction in which he shall moveso long as it is onward and upward. (Page 100)

The second great law under which this evolution is taking place is the law of cause and effect. There canbe no effect without its cause, and every cause must produce its effect. They are in fact not two but onefor the effect is really part of the cause, and he who sets one in motion sets the other also. There is inNature no such idea as that of reward or punishment, but only of cause and effect. Any one can see thisin connection with mechanics or chemistry; the clairvoyant sees it equally clearly with regard to the

problems of evolution. The same law obtains in the higher as in the lower worlds; there, as here, theangle of reflection is always equal to the angle of incidence. It is a law of mechanics that action andreaction are equal and opposite. In the almost infinitely finer matter of the higher worlds the reaction is bno means always instantaneous; it may sometimes be spread over long periods of time, but it returnsinevitably and exactly.

Just as certain in its working as the mechanical law in the physical world is the higher law, according towhich the man who sends out a good thought or does a good action receives good in return, while theman who sends out an evil thought or does an evil action receives evil in return with equal accuracy –once more, not in the least as a reward or punishment administered by some external will, but simply as

the definite and mechanical result of his own activity. Man has learnt to appreciate a mechanical result inthe physical world, because the reaction is usually almost immediate and can be seen by him. (Page101)He does not invariably understand the reaction in the higher worlds because that takes a wider sweep,and often returns not in this physical life, but in some future one.

The action of this law affords the explanation of a number of the problems of ordinary life. It accounts forthe different destinies imposed upon people, and also for the differences in the people themselves. If onman is clever in a certain direction and another is stupid, it is because in a previous life the clever manhas devoted much effort to practice in that particular direction, while the stupid man is trying it for the firstime. The genius and the precocious child are examples not of the favoritism of some deity but of the

result produced by previous lives of application. All the varied circumstances which surround us are theresult of our own actions in the past, precisely as are the qualities of which we find ourselves inpossession. We are what we have made ourselves, and our circumstances are such as we havedeserved.

There is, however, a certain adjustment or apportionment of these effects. Though the law is a naturallaw and mechanical in its operation, there are nevertheless certain great Angels who are concerned withits administration. They cannot change by one feather weight the amount of the result which follows upoany given thought or act, but they can within certain limits expedite or delay its action, and decide what

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form it shall take.

If this were not done there would be at least a (Page 102) possibility that in his earlier stages the manmight blunder so seriously that the results of his blundering might be more than he could bear. The planof the Deity is to give man a limited amount of freewill; if he uses that small amount well, he earns theright to a little more next time; if he used it badly, suffering comes upon him as the result of such evil use

and he finds himself restrained by the result of his previous actions. As the man learns how to use hisfree will, more and more of it is entrusted to him, so that he can acquire for himself practically unboundefreedom in the direction of good, but his power to do wrong is strictly restricted. He can progress asrapidly as he will, but he cannot wreck his life in his ignorance. In the earlier stages of the savage life of primitive man it is natural that there should be on the whole more of evil than of good, and if the entireresult of his actions came at once upon a man as yet so little developed, it might well crush the newlyevolved powers which are still so feeble.

Besides this, the effects of his actions are varied in character. While some of them produce immediateresults, others need much more time for their action, and so it comes to pass that as the man develops

he has above him a hovering cloud of undischarged results, some of them good, some of them bad. Ouof this mass (which we may regard for the purposes of analogy much as though it were a debt owing tothe powers of nature) a certain amount falls due in each of his successive births; and that amount, so(Page 103) assigned, may be thought of as the man’s destiny for that particular life.

All that it means is that a certain amount of joy and a certain amount of suffering are due to him, and wilunavoidably happen to him; how he will meet this destiny and what use he will make of it, that is leftentirely to his own option. It is a certain amount of force which has to work itself out. Nothing can preventhe action of that force, but its action may always be modified by the application of a new force in anothedirection, just as is the case in mechanics. The result of past evil is like any other debt; it may be paid in

one large check upon the bank of life – by some one supreme catastrophe; or it may be paid in a numbeof smaller notes, in minor troubles and worries; in some cases it may even be paid in the small change oa vast number of petty annoyances. But one thing is quite certain – that, in some form or other, paid it whave to be.

The conditions of our present life, then, are absolutely the result of our own action in the past; and theother side of that statement is that our actions in this life are building up conditions for the next one. Aman who finds himself limited either in powers or in outer circumstances may not always be able to makhimself or his conditions all that he would wish in this life; but he can certainly secure for the next onewhatever he chooses.

Man’s every action ends not with himself, but invariably affects others around him. In some cases thiseffect may be comparatively trivial, while in (Page 104) others it may be of the most serious character. Thtrivial results, whether good or bad are simply small debits or credits in our account with Nature; but thegreater effects, whether good or bad, make a personal account which is to be settled with the individualconcerned.

A man who gives a meal to a hungry beggar, or cheers him by a kindly word, will receive the result of his

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good action as part of a kind of general fund of Nature’s benefits; but one who by some good actionchanges the whole current of another man’s life will assuredly have to meet that same man again in afuture life, in order that he who has been benefited may have the opportunity of repaying the kindnessthat has been done to him. One who causes annoyance to another will suffer proportionately for itsomewhere, somehow, in the future, though he may never meet again the man whom he has troubled;but one who does serious harm to another, one who wrecks his life or retards his evolution, mustcertainly meet his victim again at some later point in the course of their lives, so that he may have the

opportunity, by kindly and self-sacrificing service, of counterbalancing the wrong which he has done. Inshort, large debts must be paid personally, but small ones go into the general fund.

These then are the principal factors which determine the next birth of the man. First acts the great law oevolution, and its tendency is to press the man into that position in which he can most easily develop thequalities which he most needs. For the purposes of the general scheme, humanity is divided (Page 105)into great races, called root-races, which rule and occupy the world successively. The great Aryan or Indo-Caucasian race, which at the present moment includes the most advanced ofEearth’s inhabitants, one of these. That which came before it in the order of evolution was the Mongolian race, usually calledin Theosophical books Atlantean, because the continent from which it ruled the world lay where now roll

the waters of the Atlantic ocean. Before that came the Negroid race, some of whose descendants stillexist, though by this time much mingled with offshoots of later races. From each of these great root-racethere are many offshoots which we call sub-races – such, for example, as the Romance races or theTeutonic; and each of these sub-races in turn divides itself into branch races, such as the French and thItalians, the English and the Germans.

These arrangements are made in order that for each ego there may be a wide choice of varyingconditions and surroundings. Each race is especially adapted to develop within its people one or other othe qualities which are needed in the course of evolution. In every nation there exist an almost infinitenumber of diverse conditions, riches and poverty, a wide field of opportunities or a total lack of them,

facilities for development or conditions under which development is difficult or well-nigh impossible.Amidst all these infinite possibilities the pressure of the law of evolution tends to guide the man toprecisely those which best suit his needs at the stage at which he happens to be.

But the action of this law is limited by that other (Page 106) law of which we spoke, the law of cause andeffect. The man’s actions in the past may not have been such as to deserve (if we may put it so) the bespossible opportunities; he may have set in motion in his past certain forces the inevitable result of whichwill be to produce limitations; and these limitations may operate to prevent his receiving that bestpossible of opportunities, and so as the result of his own actions in the past he may have to put up withthe second-best. So we may say that the action of the law of evolution, which if left to itself would do the

very best possible for every man, is restrained by the man’s own previous actions.

An important feature in that limitation – one which may act most powerfully for good or for evil – is theinfluence of the group of egos with which the man has made definite links in the past – those with whomhe has formed strong ties of love or hate, of helping or of injury – those souls whom he must meet againbecause of connections made with them in days of long ago. His relation with them is a factor which mube taken into consideration before it can be determined where and how he shall be reborn.

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The will of the Deity is man’s evolution. The effort of that nature which is an expression of the Deity is togive the man whatever is most suitable for that evolution; but this is conditioned by the man’s deserts inthe past and by the links which he has already formed. It may be assumed that a man descending intoincarnation could learn the lessons necessary for that life in any one of a hundred positions. (Page 107)From half of these or more than half he may be debarred by the consequences of some of his many andvaried actions in the past. Among the few possibilities which remain open to him, the choice of onepossibility in particular may be determined by the presence in that family or in that neighborhood of othe

egos upon whom he has a claim for services rendered, or to whom he in his turn owes a debt of love.(Page 108)

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CHAPTER VIII

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

To fulfill our duty in the divine scheme we must try to understand not only that scheme as a whole, but

the special part that man is intended to play in it. The divine outbreathing reaches its deepest immersionin matter in the mineral kingdom, but it reaches its ultimate point of differentiation not at the lowest levelof materiality, but at the entrance into the human kingdom on the upward arc of evolution. We have thusto realize three stages in the course of this evolution:

(a) The downward arc in which the tendency is toward differentiation and also toward greatmateriality. In this stage spirit is involving itself in matter, in order that it may learn to receive impressionthrough it.

(b) The earlier part of the upward arc, in which the tendency is still toward greater differentiation, but

the same time toward spiritualization and escape from materiality. In this stage the spirit is learning dominate matter and to see it as an expression of itself.

(c) The later part of the upward arc, when differentiation has been finally accomplished, and ttendency is toward unity as well as toward greater spirituality. In this stage the spirit, having lear(Page109) perfectly how to receive impressions through matter and how to express itself through it, anhaving awakened its dormant powers, learns to use these powers rightly in the service of the Deity.

The object of the whole previous evolution has been to produce the ego as a manifestation of the Monad

Then the ego in its turn evolves by putting itself down into a succession of personalities. Men who do nounderstand this look upon the personality as the self, and consequently live for it alone, and try toregulate their lives for what appears to be its temporary advantage. The man who understands realizesthat the only important thing is the life of the ego, and that its progress is the object for which thetemporary personality must be used. Therefore when he has to decide between two possible courses hethinks not, as the ordinary man might: “Which will bring the greater pleasure and profit to me as apersonality?” but “Which will bring greater progress to me as an ego?” Experience soon teaches him thanothing can ever be really good for him, or for any one, which is not good for all, and so presently helearns to forget himself altogether, and to ask only what will be best for humanity as a whole.

Clearly then at this stage of evolution whatever tends to unity, whatever tends to spirituality, is in accordwith the plan of the Deity for us, and is therefore right for us, while whatever tends to separateness or tomateriality is certainly equally wrong for us. There are thoughts and emotions which tend to unity, such alove, sympathy, reverence, benevolence; (Page 110) there are others which tend to disunion, such ashatred, jealousy, envy, pride, cruelty, fear. Obviously the former group are for us the right, the latter grouare for us the wrong.

In all these thoughts and feelings which are clearly wrong, we recognize one dominant note, the though

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of self; while in all those which are clearly right we recognize that the thought is turned toward others,and that the personal self is forgotten. Wherefore we see that selfishness is the one great wrong, andthat perfect unselfishness is the crown of all virtue. This gives us at once a rule of life. The man whowishes intelligently to co-operate with the Divine Will must lay aside all thought of the advantage or pleasure of the personal self, and must devote himself exclusively to carrying out that Will by working fothe welfare and happiness of others.

This is a high ideal, and difficult of attainment, because there lies behind us such a long history of selfishness. Most of us are as yet far from the purely altruistic attitude; how are we to go to work to attainit, lacking as we do the necessary intensity in so many of the good qualities, and possessing so manywhich are undesirable?

Here comes into operation the great law of cause and effect to which I have already referred. Just as wecan confidently appeal to the laws of nature in the physical world, so may we also appeal to these laws othe higher world. If we find evil qualities within us, they have grown up by slow degrees throughignorance and through self-indulgence. Now (Page 111) that the ignorance is dispelled by knowledge, now

that in consequence we recognize the quality as an evil, the method of getting rid of it lies obviouslybefore us.

For each of these vices there is a contrary virtue; if we find one of them rearing its head within us, let usimmediately determine deliberately to develop within ourselves the contrary virtue. If a man realizes thatin the past he has been selfish, that means that he has set up within himself the habit of thinking of himself first and pleasing himself, of consulting his own convenience or his pleasure without due thoughof the effect upon others; let him set to work purposefully to form the exactly opposite habit, to make apractice before doing anything of thinking how it will affect all those around him; let him set himself habitually to please others, even though it be at the cost of trouble or privation for himself. This also in

time will become a habit, and by developing it he will have killed out the other.

If a man finds himself full of suspicion, ready always to assign evil motives to the actions of those abouthim, let him set himself steadily to cultivate trust in his fellows, to give them credit always for the highestpossible motives. It may be said that a man who does this will lay himself open to be deceived, and thatin many cases his confidence will be misplaced. That is a small matter; it is far better for him that heshould sometimes be deceived as a result of his trust in his fellows than that he should save himself fromsuch deception by maintaining a (Page 112) constant attitude of suspicion. Besides, confidence begetsfaithfulness. A man who is trusted will generally prove himself worthy of the trust, whereas a man who issuspected is likely presently to justify that suspicion.

If a man finds in himself the tendency toward avarice, let him go out of his way to be especially generouif he finds himself irritable, let him definitely train himself in calmness; if he finds himself devoured bycuriosity, let him deliberately refuse again and again to gratify that curiosity; if he is liable to fits of depression, let him persistently cultivate cheerfulness, even under the most adverse circumstances.

In every case the existence of an evil quality in the personality means a lack of the corresponding goodquality in the ego. The shortest way to get rid of that evil and to prevent its reappearance is to fill the gap

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in the ego, and the good quality which is thus developed will show itself as an integral part of the man’scharacter through all his future lives. An ego cannot be evil, but he can be imperfect. The qualities whichhe develops cannot be other than good qualities, and when they are well defined they show themselvesin each of all his numerous personalities, and consequently those personalities can never be guilty of thvices opposite to these qualities; but where there is a gap in the ego, where there is a qualityundeveloped, there is nothing inherent in the personality to check the growth of the opposite vice; andsince others in the world about him already possess (Page 113) that vice, and man is an imitative animal,

is quite probable that it will speedily manifest itself in him. This vice, however, belongs to the vehiclesonly and not to the man inside. In these vehicles its repetition may set up a momentum which is hard toconquer; but if the ego bestirs himself to create in himself the opposite virtue, the vice is cut off at its rooand can no longer exist – neither in this life nor in all the lives that are to come.

A man who is trying to evolve these qualities in himself will find certain obstacles in his way – obstacleswhich he must learn to surmount. One of these is the critical spirit of the age – the disposition to find fauwith a thing, to belittle everything, to look for faults in everything, and in everyone. The exact opposite othis is what is needed for progress. He who wishes to move rapidly along the path of evolution must learto see good in everything – to see the latent Deity in everything and in every one. Only so can he help

those other people – only so can he get the best out of those other things.

Another obstacle is the lack of perseverance. We tend in these days to be impatient; if we try any planwe expect immediate results from it, and if we do not get them, we give up that plan and try somethingelse. That is not the way to make progress in occultism. The effort which we are making is to compressinto one or two lives the evolution which would naturally take perhaps a hundred lives. That is not the soof undertaking in which immediate results are to be expected. We attempt to uproot an (Page114) evilhabit, and we find it hard work; why? Because we have indulged in that practice for, perhaps, twentythousand years; one cannot shake off the custom of twenty thousand years in a day or two. We haveallowed that habit to gain an enormous momentum, and before we can set up a force in the opposite

direction we have to overcome that momentum. That cannot be done in a moment, but it is absolutelycertain that it wil l be done eventually, if we persevere, because the momentum, however strong it maybe, is a finite quality, whereas the power that we can bring to bear against it is the infinite power of thehuman will, which can make renewed efforts day after day, year after year, even life after life if necessary

Another great difficulty in our way is the lack of clearness in our thought. People in the West are littleused to clear thought with regard to religious matters. Everything is vague and nebulous. For occultdevelopment vagueness and nebulosity will not do. Our conceptions must be clear cut and our thoughtimages definite. Other necessary characteristics are calmness and cheerfulness; these are rare inmodern life, but are absolute essentials for the work which we are here undertaking.

The process of building a character is as scientific as that of developing one’s muscles. Many a man,finding himself with certain muscles flabby and powerless takes that as his natural condition, and regardtheir weakness as a kind of destiny imposed upon him; but anyone who understands a little of the humabody is aware that by continued exercise (Page 115) those muscles can be brought into a state of healthand the whole body eventually put in order. In exactly the same way, many a man finds himself possessed of a bad tamper or a tendency to avarice or suspicion or self-indulgence, and when inconsequence of any of these vices he commits some great mistake or does some great harm he offers as an excuse that he is a hasty-tempered man, or that he possesses this or that quality by nature –

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implying that therefore he cannot help it.

In this case just as in the other the remedy is in his own hands. Regular exercise of the right kind willdevelop a certain muscle, and regular mental exercise of the right kind will develop a missing quality in man’s character. The ordinary man does not realize that he can do this, and even if he sees that he cando it, he does not see why he should, for it means much effort and much self-repression. He knows of n

adequate motive for undertaking a task so laborious and painful.

The motive is supplied by the knowledge of the truth. One who gains an intelligent comprehension of thedirection of evolution feels it not only his interest but his privilege and his delight to co-operate with it.One who wills the end wills also the means; in order to be able to do good work for the world he mustdevelop within himself the necessary strength and the necessary qualities. Therefore he who wishes toreform the world must first of all reform himself. He must learn to give up altogether the attitude of insisting upon rights, and must devote himself utterly (Page 116) to the most earnest performance of hisduties. He must learn to regard every connection with his fellowman as an opportunity to help thatfellowman, or in some way to do him good.

One who studies these subjects intelligently cannot but realize the tremendous power of thought, and thnecessity for its efficient control. All action springs from thought, for even when it is done (as we say)without thought, it is the instinctive expression of the thoughts, desires and feelings which the man hasallowed to grow luxuriantly within himself in earlier days.

The wise man, therefore, will watch his thought with the greatest of care, for in it he possesses apowerful instrument, for the right use of which he is responsible. It is his duty to govern his thought, lest should be allowed to run riot and to do evil to himself and to others; it is his duty also to develop his

thought power, because by means of it a vast amount of actual and active good can be done. Thuscontrolling his thought and his action, thus eliminating from himself all evil and unfolding in himself allgood qualities, the man presently raises himself far above the level of his fellows, and stands outconspicuously among them as one who is working on the side of good as against evil, of evolution asagainst stagnation.

The members of the great Hierarchy in whose hands is the evolution of the world are watching always fosuch men in order that They may train them to help in the greater work. Such a man inevitably attractsTheir attention and They begin to (Page 117) use him as an instrument in Their work. If he proves himselfgood and efficient instrument, presently They will offer him definite training as an apprentice, that byhelping Them in the world-business which They have to do he may some day become even as They areand join the might Brotherhood to which They belong.

But for an honor so great as this mere ordinary goodness will not suffice. True, a man must be good firsof all, or it would be hopeless to think of using him, but in addition to being good he must be wise andstrong. What is needed is not merely a good man, but a great spiritual power. Not only must thecandidate have cast aside all ordinary weaknesses but he must have acquired strong positive qualitiesbefore he can offer himself to Them with any hope that he will be accepted. He must live no longer as ablundering and selfish personality, but as an intelligent ego who comprehends the part which he has to

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play in the great scheme of the universe. He must have forgotten himself utterly; he must have resignedall thought of worldly profit or pleasure or advancement; he must be willing to sacrifice everything, andhimself first of all, for the sake of the work that has to be done. He may be in the world, but he must notbe of the world. He must be careless utterly of its opinion. For the sake of helping man he must makehimself something more than man. Radiant, rejoicing, strong, he must live but for the sake of others andto be an expression of the love of God in the world. A high ideal, yet not too high; possible, because theare men who have achieved it.(Page 118)

When a man has succeeded in unfolding his latent possibilities so far that he attracts the attention of theMasters of the Wisdom, one of Them will probably receive him as an apprentice upon probation. Theperiod of probation is usually seven years, but may be either shortened or lengthened at the discretion othe Master. At the end of that time, if his work has been satisfactory, he becomes what is commonlycalled the accepted pupil. This brings him into close relations with his Master, so that the vibrations of thlatter constantly play upon him, and he gradually learns to look at everything as the Master looks at it.After yet another interval, if he proves himself entirely worthy, he may be drawn into a still closer relationship, when he is called the son of the Master.

These three stages mark his relationship to his own Master only, not to the Brotherhood as a whole. TheBrotherhood admits a man to its ranks only when he has fitted himself to pass the first of the greatInitiations.

This entry into the Brotherhood of Those who rule the world may be thought of as the third of the greatcritical points in man’s evolution. The first of these is when he becomes man – when he individualizes ouof the animal kingdom and obtains a causal body. The second is what is called by the Christian“conversion”, and by the Hindu “the acquirement of discrimination”, and by the Buddhist “the opening ofthe doors of the mind”. That is the point at which he realizes the great facts of life, and turns away from

the pursuit of selfish ends in order to move intentionally (Page 119) along with the great current of evolution in obedience to the divine Will. The third point is the most important of all, for the Initiationwhich admits him to the ranks of the Brotherhood also insures him against the possibility of failure to fulthe divine purpose in the time appointed for it. Hence those who have reached this point are called in theChristian system the “elect”, the “saved” or the “safe,” and in the Buddhist scheme “those who haveentered on the stream.”For those who have reached this point have made themselves absolutely certainof reaching a further point also – that of Adeptship, at which they pass into a type of evolution which isdefinitely superhuman.

The man who has become an Adept has fulfilled the divine Will so far as this chain of worlds is

concerned. He has reached, even already the midmost point of the aeon of evolution, the stageprescribed for man’s attainment at the end of it. Therefore he is at liberty to spend the remainder of thattime either in helping his fellow-men or in even more splendid work in connection with other and higher evolutions. He who has not yet been initiated is still in danger of being left behind by our present wave oevolution, and dropping into the next one – the “aeonian condemnation” of which the Christ spoke, whichas been mistranslated “eternal damnation”. It is from this fate of possible aeonian failure – that is, failurfor this age, or dispensation, or life-wave – that the man who attains Initiation is “safe”. He has “enteredupon the stream" which now must bear him on to Adeptship in this present (Page 120) age, though it is stpossible for him by his actions to hasten or delay his progress along the Path which he is treading.

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That first Initiation corresponds to the matriculation which admits a man to a University, and theattainment of Adeptship to the taking of a degree at the end of the course. Continuing the simile, thereare three intermediate examinations, which are usually spoken of as the second, third and fourthInitiations, Adeptship being the fifth. A general idea of the line of this higher evolution may be obtained bstudying the list of what are called in Buddhist books “the fetters” which must be cast off – the qualities owhich a man must rid himself as he treads this Path. These are: the delusion of separateness; doubt or uncertainty; superstition; attachment to enjoyment; the possibility of hatred; desire for life, either in this o

the higher worlds; pride; agitation or irritability; and ignorance. The man who reaches the Adept level haexhausted all the possibilities of moral development, and so the future evolution which still lies before hican only mean still wider knowledge and still more wonderful spiritual powers. (Page 121)

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CHAPTER IX

THE PLANETARY CHAINS

The scheme of evolution of which our Earth forms a part is not the only one in our solar system, for ten

separate chains of globes exist in that system which are all of them theatres of somewhat similar progress. Each of these schemes of evolution is taking place upon a chain of globes, and in the course each scheme its chain of globes goes through seven incarnations. The plan, alike of each scheme as awhole and of the successive incarnations of its chain of globes, is to dip step by step more deeply intomatter, and then to rise step by step out of it again.

Each chain consists of seven globes, and both globes and chains observe the rule of descending intomatter and then rising out of it again. In order to make this comprehensible let us take as an example thchain to which our Earth belongs. At the present time it is in its fourth or most material incarnation, andtherefore three of its globes belong to the physical world, two to the astral world and two to the lower paof the mental world. The wave of Divine Life passes in succession from globe to globe of this chain,beginning with one of the highest, descending gradually to the lowest and then climbing again to thesame level as that at which it began.

Let us for convenience of reference label the seven (Page 122) globes by the earlier letters of thealphabet, and number the incarnations in order. Thus, as this is the fourth incarnation of our chain, thefirst globe in this incarnation will be 4A, the second 4B, the third 4C, the fourth (which is our Earth) 4D,and so on.

These globes are not all composed of physical matter. 4A contains no matter lower than that of the

mental world; it has its counterpart in all the worlds higher than that, but nothing below it. 4B exists in thastral world; but 4C is a physical globe, visible to our telescope, and is in fact the planet which we knowas Mars. Globe 4D is our own Earth, on which the life-wave of the chain is at present in action. Globe 4Eis the planet which we call Mercury – also in the physical world. Globe 4F is in the astral world,corresponding on the ascending arc to globe 4B in the descent; while globe 4G corresponds to globe 4Ain having its lowest manifestation in the lower part of the mental world. Thus it will be seen that we havea scheme of globes starting in the lower mental world, dipping through the astral into the physical andthen rising into the lower mental through the astral again.

Just as the succession of the globes in a chain constitutes a descent into matter and an ascent from itagain, so do the successive incarnations of a chain. We have described the condition of affairs in thefourth incarnation; looking back at the third, we find that that commences not on the lower level of themental world but on the higher. Globes 3A and 3G, then, are both of higher mental matter, while globes(Page123) 3B and 3F are at the lower mental level. Globes 3C and 3E belong to the astral world, and onlyglobe 3D is visible in the physical world. Although this third incarnation of our chain is long past, thecorpse of this physical globe 3D is still visible to us in the shape of that dead planet the Moon, whencethat third incarnation is usually called the lunar chain.

The fifth incarnation of our chain, which still lies very far in the future, will correspond to the third. In thatglobes 5A and 5G will be built of higher mental matter, globes 5B and 5F of lower mental matter, globes

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5C and 5E of astral matter, and only globe 5D will be in the physical world. This planet 5D is of coursenot yet in existence.

The other incarnations of the chain follow the same general rule of gradually decreasing materiality; 2A,2G, 6A and 6G are all in the intuitional world; 2B, 2F, 6B and 6F are all in the higher part of the mentalworld; 2C, 2E, 6C and 6E are in the lower part of the mental world; 2D and 6D are in the astral world. In

the same way 1A, 1G, 7A and 7G belong to the spiritual world; 1B, 1F, 7B and 7F are in the intuitionalworld; 1C, 1E, 7C and 7E are in the higher part of the mental world; 1D and 7D are in the lower part of the mental world.

Thus it will be seen that not only does the life-wave in passing through one chain of globes dip down intomatter and rise out of it again, but the chain itself in its successive incarnations does exactly the samething.

There are ten schemes of evolution at present existing in our solar system, but only seven of them (Page

124) are at the stage where they have planets in the physical world. These are: (1) that of anunrecognized planet Vulcan, very near the sun, about which we have very little definite information. Itwas seen by the astronomer Hersche, but is now said to have disappeared. We at first understood that was in its third incarnation; but it is now regarded as possible that it has recently passed from its fifth toits sixth chain, which would account for its alleged disappearance; (2) that of Venus, which is in its fifthincarnation, and also therefore has only one visible globe; (3) that of the Earth, Mars and Mercury, whichhas three visible planets because it is in its fourth incarnation; (4) that of Jupiter, (5) that of Saturn, (6)that of Uranus, all in their third incarnations; and (7) that of Neptune and the two unnamed planetsbeyond his orbit, which is in its fourth incarnation, and therefore has three physical planets as we have.

In each incarnation of a chain (commonly called a chain-period) the wave of Divine Life moves seventimes round the chain of seven planets, and each such movement is spoken of as a round. The time thathe life-wave stays upon each planet, is known as a world-period, and in the course of a world-periodthere are seven great root-races. As has been previously explained, these are subdivided into sub-raceand those again into branch races. For convenience of reference we may state this in tabular form: (Pag125)

Make

7 Branch-Races 1- Sub-Race

7 Sub-Races 1-Root-Race

7 Root-Races 1-World-Period

7 World-Periods 1-Round

7 Rounds 1-Chain-Period

7 Chain-Periods 1-Scheme of Evolution

10 Schemes of Evolution Our System Evolution

It is clear that the fourth root-race of the fourth globe of the fourth round of a fourth chain-period would b

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the central point of a whole scheme of evolution, and we find ourselves at the present moment only alittle past the point. The Aryan race, to which we belong, is the fifth root-race of the fourth globe, so thatthe actual middle point fell in the time of the last great root-race, the Atlantean. Consequently the humanrace as a whole is very little more than halfway through its evolution, and those few souls who arealready nearing Adeptship, which is the end and crown of this evolution, are very far in advance of their fellows.

How do they come to be so far in advance? Partly and in some cases because they have worked hardebut usually because they are older egos – because they were individualized out of the animal kingdom aan earlier date, and so have had more time for the human part of their evolution.

Any given wave of life sent forth from the Deity usually spends a chain-period in each of the greatkingdoms of nature. That which in our first chain was ensouling the first elemental kingdom must haveensouled in the second of those kingdoms in the second chain, the third of them in the Moon-chain, andis now in the mineral kingdom in the fourth chain. In the future fifth chain it will ensoul the vegetablekingdom, in the sixth the animal, and in the seventh it will attain humanity.

From this it follows that we ourselves represented the mineral kingdom on the first chain, the vegetableon the second, and the animal on the lunar chain. (Page 126) There some of us attained our individualization, and so we were enabled to enter this Earth-chain as men. Others who were a little morbackward did not succeed in attaining it, and so had to be born into this chain as animals for a whilebefore they could reach humanity.

Not all of mankind, however, entered this chain together. When the lunar chain came to its end thehumanity upon it stood at various levels. Not Adeptship, but what is now for us the fourth step on the

Path, was the goal appointed for that chain. Those who had attained it (commonly called in theosophicaliterature the Lords of the Moon) had, as is usual, seven choices before them as to the way in which theywould serve. Only one of those choices brought them, or rather a few of them, over into this Earth-chainto act as guides and teachers to the earlier races. A considerable proportion – a vast proportion, indeed of the Moon-men had not attained that level, and consequently had to appear in this Earth-chain ashumanity. Besides this, a great mass of the animal kingdom of the Moon-chain was surging up to thelevel of individualization, and some of its members had already reached it, while many others had not.These latter needed further animal incarnations upon the Earth-chain, and for the moment may be putaside.

There were many classes even among humanity, and the manner in which these distributed themselvesover the Earth-chain needs some explanation. It is the general rule that those who have attained thehighest possible in any chain, on any globe, in (Page 127) any root-race, are not born into the beginning othe next chain, globe or race, respectively. The earlier stages are always for the backward entities, andonly when they have already passed through a good deal of evolution and are beginning to approach thlevel of those others who had done better, do the latter descend into incarnation and join them oncemore. That is to say, almost the earlier half of any period of evolution, whether it be a race, a globe or achain, seems to be devoted to bringing the backward people up to nearly the level of those who have goon better; then these latter also (who, in the meantime, have been resting in great enjoyment in themental world) descend into incarnation along with the others, and they press on together until the end o

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the period.

Thus the first of the egos from the Moon who entered the Earth-chain were by no means the mostadvanced. Indeed they may be described as the least advanced of those who had succeeded in attaininhumanity – the animal-men. Coming as they did into a chain of new globes, freshly aggregated, they hato establish the forms in all the different kingdoms of Nature. This needs to be done at the beginning of

the first round in a new chain, but never after that; for though the life-wave is centered only upon one of the seven globes of a chain at any given time, yet life has not entirely departed from the other globes. Atthe present moment, for example, the life-wave of our chain is centered in this Earth, but on the other twphysical globes of our chain, Mars and Mercury, life still exists. There is still a (Page128) population,human, animal and vegetable, and consequently when the life-wave goes round again to either of thoseplanets there will be no necessity for the creation of new forms. The old types are already there, and allthat will happen will be a sudden marvellous fecundity, so that the various kingdoms will quickly increasand multiply, and make a rapidly increasing population instead of a stationary one.

It was, then, the animal-men, the lowest class of human beings of the Moon-chain, who established the

forms in the first round of the Earth-chain. Pressing closely after them were the highest of the lunar animal kingdom, who were soon ready to occupy the forms which had just been made. In the secondjourney round the seven globes of the Earth-chain, the animal-men who had been the most backward ofthe lunar humanity were leaders of this terrene humanity, the highest of the moon-animals making its lesdeveloped grades. The same thing went on in the third round of the Earth-chain, more and more of thelunar animals attaining individualization and joining the human ranks, until in the middle of that round onthis very globe D which we call the Earth, a higher class of human beings – the Second Order of moon-men – descended into incarnation and at once took the lead.

When we come to the fourth, our present round, we find the First Order of the moon-men pouring in upo

us – all the highest and the best of the lunar humanity who had only just fallen short of success. (Page129) Some of those who had already, even on the Moon, entered upon the Path soon attained its end,became Adepts and passed away from the Earth. Some few others who had not been quite so far advanced have attained Adeptship only comparatively recently – that is, within the last few thousandyears, and these are the Adepts of the present day. We, who find ourselves in the higher races of humanity now, were several stages behind Them, but the opportunity lies before us of following in Their steps if we will.

The evolution of which we have been speaking is that of the ego himself, of what might be called the soof man; but at the same time there has been also an evolution of the body. The forms built in the first

round were very different from any of which we know anything now. Properly speaking, those which wermade on our physical earth can scarcely be called forms at all, for they were constructed of ethericmatter only, and resembled vague, drifting and almost shapeless clouds. In the second round they weredefinitely physical, but still shapeless and light enough to float about in currents of wind.

Only in the third round did they begin to bear any kind of resemblance to man as we know him today. Thvery methods of reproduction of those primitive forms differed from those of humanity today, and far moresembled those which we now find only in very much lower types of life. Man in those early days wasandrogynous, and a definite separation into the sexes took place only about the middle of (Page 130) the

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third round. From that time onward until now the shape of man has been steadily evolving along definitehuman lines, becoming smaller and more compact than it was, learning to stand upright instead of stooping and crawling, and generally differentiating itself from the animal forms out of which it had beenevolved.

One curious break in the regularity of this evolution deserves mention. On this globe, in this fourth round

there was a departure from the straightforward scheme of evolution. This being the middle globe of amiddle round, the midmost point of evolution upon it marked the last movement at which it was possiblefor members of what had been the lunar animal kingdom to attain individualization. Consequently a sortof strong effort was made – a special scheme was arranged to give a final chance to as many aspossible. The conditions of the first and second rounds were specially reproduced in place of the first ansecond races – conditions of which in the earlier rounds these backward egos had not been able fully totake advantage. Now, with the additional evolution which they had undergone during the third round,some of them were able to take such advantage, and so they rushed in at the very last moment beforethe door was shut, and became just human. Naturally they will not reach any high level of humandevelopment, but at least when they try again in some future chain it will be some advantage to them tohave had even this slight experience of human life.

Our terrestrial evolution received a most valuable (Page 131) stimulus from the assistance given to us byour sister globe, Venus. Venus is at present in the fifth incarnation of its chain, and in the seventh roundof that incarnation, so that its inhabitants are a whole chain and a half in front of us in evolution. Since,therefore, its people are so much more developed than ours, it was thought desirable that certain Adeptsfrom the Venus evolution should be transferred to our Earth in order to assist in the specially busy timejust before the closing of the door, in the middle of the fourth root-race.

These august Beings have been called the Lords of the Flame and the Children of the Fire-mist, and

They have produced a wonderful effect upon our evolution. The intellect of which we are so proud isalmost entirely due to Their presence, for in the natural course of events the next round, the fifth, shouldbe that of intellectual advancement, and in this our present fourth round we should be devoting ourselvechiefly to the cultivation of the emotions. We are therefore in reality a long way in advance of the programmarked out for us; and such advance is entirely due to the assistance given by these great Lords of theFlame. Most of Them stayed with us only through that critical period of our history; a few still remain tohold the highest offices of the Great White Brotherhood until the time when men of our own evolutionshall have risen to such a height as to be capable of relieving their august Visitors.

The evolution lying before us in both of the life (Page 132) and of the form; for in future rounds, while the

egos will be steadily growing in power, wisdom and love, the physical forms also will be more beautifuland more perfect than they have ever yet been. We have in this world at the present time men at widelydiffering stages of evolution, and it is clear that there are vast hosts of savages who are far behind thegreat civilized races of the world – so far behind that it is quite impossible that they can overtake them.Later on in the course of our evolution a point will be reached at which it is no longer possible for thoseundeveloped souls to advance side by side with the others, so that it will be necessary that a divisionshould be made.

The proceeding is exactly analogous to the sorting out by a schoolmaster of the boys in his class. During

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the school year he has to prepare his boys for a certain examination, and by perhaps the middle of thatschool year he knows quite well which of them will pass it. If he should have in his class some who arehopelessly behind the rest, he might reasonably say to them when the middle period was reached:

“It is quite useless for you to continue with your fellows, for the more difficult lessons which I shall nowhave to give will be entirely unintelligible to you. It is impossible that you can learn enough in the time to

pass the examination, so that the effort would only be a useless strain for you, and meantime you wouldbe a hindrance to the rest of the class. It is therefore far better for you to give up striving after theimpossible, and to take up again (Page 133) the work of the lower class which you did not do perfectly, anthen to offer yourselves for this examination along with next year’s class, for what is now impossible for you will then be easy”.

This is in effect exactly what is said at a certain stage in our future evolution, to the most backward egosThey drop out of this year’s class and come along with the next one. This is the “aeonian condemnationto which reference was made a little while ago. It is computed that about two fifths of humanity will dropout of the class in this way, leaving the remaining three fifths to go on with far greater rapidity to the

glorious destinies which lie before them. (Page 134)

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CHAPTER X

THE RESULT OF THEOSOPHICAL STUDY

“Members of the Theosophical Society study these truths and Theosophists endeavor to live them”. Wh

manner of men then is the true Theosophist in consequence of his knowledge? What is the result in hisdaily life of all this study?

Finding that there is a Supreme Power who is directing the course of evolution, and that He is all-wiseand all-loving, the Theosophist sees that everything which exists within this scheme must be intended tofurther its progress. He realizes that the scripture which tells us that all things are working together for good, is not indulging in a flight of poetic fancy or voicing a pious hope, but stating a scientific fact. Thefinal attainment of unspeakable glory is an absolute certainty for every son of man, whatever may be hispresent condition; but that is by no means all. Here and at this present moment he is on his way towardthe glory; and all the circumstances surrounding him are intended to help and not to hinder him, if onlythey are rightly understood. It is sadly true that in the world there is much of evil and of sorrow and of suffering; yet from the higher point of view the Theosophist sees that, terrible though this be, it is onlytemporary and superficial, and is all being utilized as a factor in the progress.(Page 135)

When in the days of his ignorance he looked at it from its own level it was almost impossible to see this;while he looked from beneath at the under side of life, with his eyes fixed all the time upon someapparent evil, he could never gain a true grasp of its meaning. Now he raises himself above it to thehigher levels of thought and consciousness, and looks down upon it with the eye of the spirit andunderstands it in its entirety, so he can see that in very truth all is well – not that all will be well at someremote period, but that even now at this moment, in the midst of incessant striving and apparent evil, themighty current of evolution is still flowing, and so all is well because all is moving on in perfect order

toward the final goal.

Raising his consciousness thus above the storm and stress of worldly life, he recognizes what used toseem to be evil, and notes how it is apparently pressing backwards against the great stream of progressbut he also sees that the onward sweep of the divine law of evolution bears the same relation to thissuperficial evil as does the tremendous torrent of Niagara to the fleckings of foam upon its surface. Sowhile he sympathizes deeply with all who suffer, he yet realizes what will be the end of that suffering, anso for him despair or hopelessness is impossible. He applies this consideration to his own sorrows andtroubles, as well as to those of the world, and therefore one great result of his Theosophy is a perfectserenity – even more than that, a perpetual cheerfulness and joy.

For him there is an utter absence of worry, because (Page 136) in truth there is nothing left to worry abousince he knows that all must be well. His higher Science makes him a confirmed optimist, for it showshim that whatever of evil there may be in any person or in any movement, it is of necessity temporary,because it is opposed to the resistless stream of evolution; whereas whatever is good in any person or iany movement must necessarily be persistent and useful, because it has behind it the omnipotence of that current, and therefore it must abide and it must prevail.

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Yet it must not for a moment be supposed that because he is so fully assured of the final triumph of goohe remains careless or unmoved by the evils which exist in the world around him. He knows that it is hisduty to combat these to the utmost of his power, because in doing this he is working upon the side of thegreat evolutionary force, and is bringing nearer the time of its ultimate victory. None will be more activethan he in labouring for the good, even though he is absolutely free from the feeling of helplessness andhopelessness which so often oppresses those who are striving to help their fellowmen.

Another most valuable result of his theosophical study is the absence of fear. Many people are constantanxious or worried about something or other; they are fearing lest this or that should happen to them, lesthis or that combination may fail, and so all the while they are in a condition of unrest; and most seriousof all for many is the fear of death. For the Theosophist the whole of this feeling is entirely (Page 137)swept away. He realizes that great truth of reincarnation. He knows that he has often before laid asidephysical bodies, and so he sees that death is no more than sleep – that just as sleep comes in betweenour days of work and gives us rest and refreshment, so between these days of labor here on earth, whicwe call lives, there comes a long night of astral and heavenly life to give us rest and refreshment and tohelp us on our way.

To the Theosophist death is simply the laying aside for a time of this robe of flesh. He knows that it is hisduty to preserve the bodily vesture as long as possible, and gain through it all the experience he can; buwhen the time comes for him to lay it down he will do so thankfully, because he knows that the next stagwill be a much pleasanter one than this. Thus he will have no fear of death, although he realizes that hemust live his life to the appointed end, because he is here for the purpose of progress, and that progressis the one truly momentous matter. His whole conception of life is different; the object is not to earn somuch money, not to obtain such and such a position; the one important thing is to carry out the DivinePlan. He knows that for this he is here, and that everything else must give way to it.

Utterly free also is he from any religious fears or worries or troubles. All such things are swept aside for him, because he sees clearly that progress toward the highest is the Divine Will for us, that we cannotescape from that progress, and that whatever comes in our way and whatever happens to us is (Page 13meant to help us along that line; that we ourselves are absolutely the only people who can delay our advance. No longer does he trouble and fear about himself. He simply goes on and does the duty whichcomes nearest in the best way that he can, confident that if he does this all will be well for him without hperpetual worrying. He is satisfied quietly to do his work and to try to help his fellows in the race, knowinthat the great divine Power behind will press him onward slowly and steadily, and do for him all that canbe done, so long as his face is set steadfastly in the right direction, so long as he does all he reasonablycan.

Since he knows that we are all part of one great evolution and all literally the children of one father, hesees that the universal brotherhood of humanity is no mere poetical conception, but a definite fact; not adream of something which is to be in the dim distance of Utopia, but a condition existing here and now.The certainty of this all-embracing fraternity gives him a wider outlook upon life and a broad impersonalpoint of view from which to regard everything. He realizes that the true interests of all are in fact identicaand that no man can ever make real gain for himself at the cost of loss or suffering to some one else.This is not to him an article of religious belief, but a scientific fact proved to him by his study. He sees thasince humanity is literally a whole, nothing which injures one man can ever be really for the good of anyother, for the harm done influences not only the doer but also those who are about him.(Page 139)

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He knows that the only true advantage for him is that benefit which he shares with all. He sees that anyadvance which he is able to make in the way of spiritual progress or development is something securednot for himself alone but for others. If he gains knowledge or self-control, he assuredly acquires much fohimself, yet he takes nothing away from any one else, but on the contrary he helps and strengthenothers. Cognizant as he is of the absolute spiritual unity of humanity, he knows that, even in this lower world, no true profit can be made by one man which is not made in the name of and for the sake of humanity; that one man’s progress must be a lifting of the burden of all others; that one man’s advance

spiritual things means a very slight yet not imperceptible advance to humanity as a whole; that every onwho bears suffering and sorrow nobly in his struggle toward the light is lifting a little of the heavy load of the sorrow and suffering of his brothers as well.

Because he recognizes this brotherhood not merely as a hope cherished by despairing men, but as adefinite fact following in scientific series from all other facts; because he sees this as an absolutecertainty, his attitude towards all those around him changes radically. It becomes a posture ever of helpfulness, ever of the deepest sympathy, for he sees that nothing which clashes with their higher interests can be the right thing for him to do, or can be good for him in any way.

It naturally follows that he becomes filled with the widest possible tolerance and charity. He cannot but(Page 140) be always tolerant, because his philosophy shows him that it matters little what man believes,so long as he is a good man and true. Charitable also he must be, because his wider knowledge enablehim to make allowances for many things which the ordinary man does not understand. The standard of the Theosophist as to right and wrong is always higher than that of the less instructed man, yet he is far gentler than the latter in his feeling towards the sinner, because he comprehends more of human natureHe realizes how the sin appeared to the sinner at the moment of its commission, and so he makes moreallowance than is ever made by the man who is ignorant of all this.

He goes further than tolerance, charity, sympathy; he feels positive love towards mankind, and that leadhim to adopt a position of watchful helpfulness. He feels that every contact with others is for him anopportunity, and the additional knowledge which his study has brought to him enables him to give adviceor help in almost any case which comes before him. Not that he is perpetually thrusting his opinions upoother people. On the contrary, he observes that to do this is one of the commonest mistakes made by thuninstructed. He knows that argument is foolish waste of energy, and therefore he declines to argue. If anyone desires from him explanation or advice he is more than willing to give it, yet he has no sort of wish to convert anyone else to his own way of thinking.

In every relation of life this idea of helpfulness comes into play, not only with regard to his fellowmen(Page 141)

but also in connection with the vast animal kingdom which surrounds him. Units of this kingdoare often brought into close relation with man, and this is for him an opportunity of doing something for them. The Theosophist recognizes that these are also his brothers, even though they may be younger brothers, and that he owes a fraternal duty to them also – so to act and so to think that his relation withthem shall be always for their good and never for their harm.

Pre-eminently and above all, this Theosophy is to him a doctrine of common sense. It puts before him, afar as he can at present know them, the facts about God and man and the relations between them; thenhe proceeds to take these facts into account and to act in relation to them with ordinary reason and

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common sense. He regulates his life according to the laws of evolution which it has taught him, and thisgives him a totally different standpoint, and a touchstone by which to try everything – his own thoughtsand feelings, and his own actions first of all, and then those things which come before him in the worldoutside himself.

Always he applies this criterion: Is the thing right or wrong, does it help evolution or does it hinder it? If a

thought or a feeling arises within himself, he sees at once by this test whether it is one he ought toencourage. If it be for the greatest good of the greatest number then all is well; if it may hinder or causeharm to any being in its progress, then it is evil and to be avoided. Exactly the same reason holds good he is called upon to decide (Page 142) with regard to anything outside himself. If from that point of view athing be a good thing, then he can consciously support it; if not, then it is not for him.

For him the question of personal interest does not come into the case at all. He thinks simply of the goodof evolution as a whole. This gives him a definite foothold and clear criterion, and removes from himaltogether the pain of indecision and hesitation. The Will of the Deity is man’s evolution; whatever therefore helps on that evolution must be good; whatever stands in the way of it and delays it, that thing

must be wrong, even though it may have on its side all the weight of public opinion and immemorialtradition.

Knowing that the true man is the ego and not the body, he sees that it is the life of the ego only which isreally of moment, and that everything connected with the body must unhesitatingly be subordinated tothose higher interests. He recognizes that this earth life is given to him for the purpose of progress, andthat that progress is the one important thing. The real purpose of his life is the unfoldment of his powersas an ego, the development of his character. He knows that there must be evolvement not only of thephysical body but also of the mental nature, of the mind, and of the spiritual perceptions. He sees thatnothing short of absolute perfection is expected of him in connection with this development; that all pow

with regard to it is in his own hands; that he has everlasting time before him in which to attain (Page 143)this perfection, but the sooner it is gained the happier and more useful will he be.

He recognizes his life as nothing but a day at school, and his physical body as a temporary vestureassumed for the purpose of learning through it. He knows at once that this purpose of learning lessons ithe only one of any real importance, and that the man who allows himself to be diverted from thatpurpose by any consideration whatever is acting with inconceivable stupidity. To him the life devotedexclusively to physical objects, to the acquisition of wealth or fame, appears the merest child’s play – asenseless sacrifice of all that is really worth having for the sake of a few moment’s gratification of thelower part of his nature. He “sets his affection on things above and not on things of the earth”, not only

because he sees this to be the right course of action, but because he realizes so clearly thevaluelessness of these things of earth. He always tries to take the higher point of view, for he knows thathe lower is utterly unreliable – that the lower desires and feelings gather round him like a dense fog, anmake it impossible for him to see anything clearly from that level.

Whenever he finds a struggle going on within him he remembers that he himself is the higher, and thatthis which is the lower is not the real self, but merely an uncontrolled part of one of its vehicles. He knowthat though he may fall a thousand times on the way toward his goal, his reason for trying to reach itremains just as strong after the thousandth fall (Page 144) as it was in the beginning, so that it would not

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only be useless but unwise and wrong to give way to despondency and hopelessness.

He begins his journey upon the road of progress at once – not only because he knows that it is far easiefor him now than it will be if he leaves the effort until later, but chiefly because if he makes the endeavornow and succeeds in achieving some progress, if he rises thereby to some higher level, he is in aposition to hold out a helping hand to those who have not yet reached even that step on the ladder whic

he has gained. In that way he takes part, however humble it may be, in the great divine work of evolution

He knows that he has arrived at his present position only by a slow process of growth, and so he doesnot expect instantaneous attainments of perfection. He sees how inevitable is the great law of cause aneffect, and that when he once grasps the working of that law he can use it intelligently, in regard tomental and moral development, just as in the physical world we can employ for our own assistance thoslaws of nature the action of which we have learnt to understand.

Understanding what death is, he knows that there can be no need to fear it or to mourn over it, whether

comes to himself or to those whom he loves. It has come to them all often before, so there is nothingunfamiliar about it. He sees death simply as a promotion from a life which is more than half physical toone which is wholly superior, so for himself he unfeignedly welcomes it; and even when it comes (Page145) to those whom he loves, he recognizes at once the advantage for them, even though he cannot butfeel a pang of regret that he should be temporarily separated from them so far as the physical world isconcerned. But he knows that the so-called dead are near him still, and that he has only to cast off for atime his physical body in sleep in order to stand side by side with them as before.

He sees clearly that the world is one, and that the same divine laws rule the whole of it, whether it bevisible or invisible to physical sight. So he has no feeling of nervousness or strangeness in passing from

one part of it to another, and no feeling of uncertainty as to what he will find on the other side of the veil.He knows that in that higher life there opens before him a splendid vista of opportunities both for acquiring fresh knowledge and for doing useful work; that life away from this dense body has a vividnessand a brilliancy to which all earthly enjoyment is as nothing; and so through his clear knowledge andcalm confidence the power of the endless life shines out upon all those around him.

Doubt as to his future is for him impossible, for just as by looking back on the savage he realizes thatwhich he was in the past, so by looking to the greatest and wisest of mankind he knows what he will be the future. He sees an unbroken chain of development, a ladder of perfection rising steadily before him,yet with human beings upon every step of it, so that he knows that those steps are possible for him toclimb. It is just because of the unchangeableness of the great law of cause and effect that (Page 146) hefinds himself able to climb that ladder, because, since the law works always in the same way, he candepend upon it and he can use it, just as he uses the laws of Nature in the physical worlds. Hisknowledge of this law brings to him a sense of perspective, and shows him that if something comes tohim, it comes because he has deserved it as a consequence of action which he has committed, of wordwhich he has spoken, of thought to which he has given harbor in previous days or in earlier lives. Hecomprehends that all affliction is of the nature of the payment of a debt, and therefore when he has tomeet with the troubles of life he takes them and uses them as a lesson, because he understands whythey have come and is glad of the opportunity which they give him to pay off something of his obligation

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Again, and yet another way, does he take them as an opportunity, for he sees that there is another sideto them if he meets them in the right way. He spends no time in bearing prospective burdens. Whentrouble comes to him he does not aggravate it by foolish repining but sets himself to endure so much of as is inevitable, with patience and fortitude. Not that he submits himself to it as a fatalist might, for hetakes adverse circumstances as an incentive to such development as may enable him to transcendthem, and thus out of long-past evil he brings forth a seed of future growth. For in the very act of payingthe outstanding debt he develops qualities of courage and resolution that will stand him in good stead

through all the ages that are to come.

He is distinguishable from the rest of the world (Page 147) by his perennial cheerfulness, his undauntedcourage under difficulties, and his ready sympathy and helpfulness; yet he is at the same timeemphatically a man who takes life seriously, who recognizes that there is much for everyone to do in theworld, and that there is no time to waste. He knows with utter certainty that he not only makes his owndestiny but also gravely affects that of others around him, and thus he perceives how weighty aresponsibility attends the use of his power.

He knows that thoughts are things and that it is easily possible to do great harm or great good by their means. He knows that no man liveth to himself, for his every thought acts upon others as well; that thevibrations which he sends forth from his mind and from his mental nature are reproducing themselves inthe minds and the mental natures of other men, so that he is a source either of mental health or of mentill to all with whom he comes in contact.

This at once imposes upon him a far higher code of social ethics than that which is known to the outer world, for he knows that he must control not only his acts and his words, but also his thoughts, since themay produce effects more serious and more far-reaching than their outward expression in the physicalworld. He knows that even when a man is not in the least thinking of others, he yet inevitably affects

them for good or evil. In addition to this unconscious action of his thought upon others he also employs iconsciously for good. He sets currents in motion to carry mental help and comfort to many a (Page 148)friend, and in this way he finds a whole new world of usefulness opening before him.

He ranges himself ever on the side of the higher rather than the lower thought, the nobler rather than thebaser. He deliberately takes the optimistic rather than the pessimistic view of everything, the helpfulrather than the cynical, because he knows that to be fundamentally the true view. By looking continuallyfor the good in everything that he may endeavour to strengthen it, by striving always to help and never tohinder, he becomes ever of greater use to his fellow-men, and is thus in his small way a co-worker withthe splendid scheme of evolution. He forgets himself utterly and lives but for the sake of others, realizing

himself as a part of that scheme; he also realizes the God within him, and learns to become ever a truerexpression of Him, and thus in fulfilling God’s will he is not only blessed himself, but becomes a blessingto all

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